I Can Feel the Heat Closing In*

BACK IN APRIL, I REPORTED that several of my coworkers were told that their jobs were moving to the Central City office. Their choice: Follow them or accept a departure package. None chose the former.

With the continued decay of the economy, I anticipated more of this, especially with flat-out layoffs last year at this time. Sadly, I was right: This Monday, during our weekly conference call among the sales, editorial, and production folks under our particular publishing capo, we learned that staff had been cut from that last group, including two managers.

Worse, my immediate boss out in Central City confidentially passed the word along to me yesterday that another whole office got the same follow-your-job-or-leave offer as mine did in April. This would involve our publisher, who runs two other publications in addition to mine; his wife, P, who has starred in these pages in the past as my pub's past managing editor; and at least three or four other folks who work for them. They all have multiple ties to their locales, and if this story is accurate, I'd bet green money they won't choose to move.

This is terribly unfortunate, because the publisher is a gracious and diplomatic man who also works the sales end of things, and who respects the balance that advertising and editorial have to achieve so one isn't influenced by the other. And P is a fanatically hard worker who, despite my bitching during late '07 and early '08 as the old staff left, was always ready to set aside her towering workload to help when folks got swamped.

I'll find out more today or tomorrow. Rumors about cuts closer to home are circulating, too. My cube neighbor believes the HR head is making rounds about the company's offices this week, to climax with cuts in our office this Friday. I'm more curious than worried; maybe concerned is a more accurate term. I survived the first layoff, and although I know I won't get as much of a settlement this time around due to my shorter tenure (if I even get anything), I know it won't be the end of the world . . . just the end of that particular source of free office supplies.

*Thank you, Mister Burroughs.

P.S. My cube neighbor was one day off. Out on Thursday. Full details to follow here.

I'm Not Riding With This Valkyrie

I REREAD WILLIAM SHIRER'S The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich every year. Compelling, conclusive, and frightening, it reminds me of the extremes to which humans can push themselves. Not just in evil, but in resisting it. Possibly the most riveting story in the massive book is that of Operation Valkyrie, the failed, final, and most nearly successful assassination and coup attempt against Adolf Hitler. Its leader and direct instigator: Lt. Col. Claus von Stauffenberg, a count and General Staff member, who smuggled the bomb into Hitler's conference room at the remote Wolf's Lair forward command center.

Despite being a Nazi and part of its war machine, von Stauffenberg has been memorialized in Germany for his attempt to decapitate the Third Reich. When plans for a movie of the July 20 plot were announced, it caught the interest of the German people, along with my own. I enjoyed Downfall (Der Untergang), the first German-language film to recreate the last days of the Bunker in Berlin, and as I said, I find the unfolding — and unraveling — of Valkyrie to be dramatic and tragic.

So I was hugely disappointed to learn, early on, that von Stauffenberg would be portayed in this American production by Mister Hollywood, Tom Cruise. Many Germans were appalled as well, though somewhat more for Cruise's Scientology, which is rightly viewed in Germany as the cult that it is.

Tonight, I saw a trailer for Valkyrie, and I lost any tiny shred of hope that I might be able to soldier through in the hopes of watching the July 20 drama on screen no matter who was playing the Count. He didn't even speak with a British accent, which was often the default for American and British actors who needed to play WWII Germans without embarrasing themselves by speaking in ersatz Deutsch. Nope, what we've got coming out of Cruise, dressed in his General Staff uniform and flanked by a thousand fluttering Reich banners, is pure Cruise-ish American. I'd fully expect Cruise's von Stauffenberg to be confronted, during his final hour, by an injured and vengeful Hitler, yelling, "Sie können die Wahrheit nicht annehmen!" Whatever disbelief I might have been able to suspend came crashing down like the Valkyrie plot itself.

Inching Back to Normal

FRUSTRATION. Two weeks' worth of business travel have halted my forward motion on the 30x40 weight loss/exercise plan. Traffic/transit snarls Friday and today, plus the feeling of a cold coming on, wrecked my plan to see a back-to-back Godfather and Godfather Part II showing in the city. And the downside of fall — wet chill in the air and rain — draped the morning in gloom and further stymied my desire to get out and enjoy a Manhattan autumn Sunday.

I decided to sleep off the cold as much as I could. I'd been visiting the gym regularly since my return from River City, so skipping one day out of the past six wouldn't be a problem. Instead, I set the alarm clock for noon and curled back up beneath the covers. I heeded the clock's screech and ate breakfast, feeling less like I was getting a cold than actually getting over one: stiff joints and muscles, slow thoughts, and cabin fever. The day was still grim outside, which cut my desire to venture forth for a paper. Instead, I munched Grape Nuts and spent the rest of the noon hour doing chores I'd been catching up with since escaping from the black hole of business travel.

As always, things could be worse, even on the lonely, Sunday side of a three-day weekend. I'm just bitching. I did get to watch the Giants stomp the Seahags like roaches. The cold didn't feel much worse, and perhaps was just the side effect of leaving the windows open last night. Throat still feels a bit scratchy, though. On the social front, I've got the beginnings of a plan to see a friend of mine, with whom I recently reconnected after quite some time, some time later this month. And Jen and Steve will host the traditional Halloween party on the Saturday just after 10/31. No idea how I'll trump last year's award-winning costume, but I've got a few weeks to try.

So the goals for next week are (a) somehow dodge getting a full-blown cold, (b) resume my full-scale exercise and eating routine, and (c) enjoy as much of autumn as I can. I'd hate for the switchover this year to be straight from heat to dreary late-November rain.

Winging Out of Here (Sadly Not to Vegas)

TEMPORARY RADIO SILENCE FOR THE next couple of days, as I have to fly to the other office for a 2-day meeting. I didn't get the chance to update you on my old goals for last week, but I nailed the hell out of the weight one and did better on the rest. My current goal, based on the possibly subpar food choices I may be faced with on the road, is not to undo too much of my progress. If I can keep down to 223.5 by Saturday (I come back Thursday night), without losing a lot of my workout achievements (and they do have a "fitness center" at the motel), I should be OK. We shall see. If I have to spend more than 5 hours in an airport on either side, I may begin freebasing a Cinnabon.

Enough of Goddamn Michael Phelps Already

AS ONE OF THE 100 Americans who, by act of Congress, are maintained in a special reserve for those who don't give a red shit for the Olympics, I speak for the other 99 by saying, enough of this fuckin' guy already. He's got the eight medals. Good. Go retire and become a pitchman for Speedo or HTH Chlorine or whatevathefuck. He reminds me of smirking shill Jean-Claude Killy, as expertly skewered by gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson. I urge you to plop down in one of those comfy chairs at Barnes & Noble — or just fuckin' buy the thing, it's an authoritative slice of Thompson's best work — with a copy of The Great Shark Hunt and read "The Temptations of Jean-Claude Killy." Then get back to me. Though I doubt Phelps will be paired at car shows, as Killy was, with then-ascending football star O.J. Simpson.

Fitness—Denied!

I WOKE UP AT 5:00, pulled on my gym clothes, and ran out the door to keep up with my usual program. I had been looking forward to this yesterday, because today's scheduled routine was to work my legs and shoulders — both of which felt a little weak over the course of Tuesday. The slightly erratic protein intake of the weekend, and the one-day delay in getting to the gym, cost me just enough muscle to make a noticeable difference. Nothing I couldn't remedy. Besides, the back/chest routine yesterday was great; I actually added weight successfully to two movements.

So you can imagine my disappointment when I — a Fat Man on the Move, ready to push back against the Great American Disease — reached the gym and was told, by a fellow patron heading out of the facility, that they were closed.

She couldn't give me a reason, so I headed in to find out. The desk clerk told me there had been "fire department activity" last night, but that my pass would be cross-honored at the other two clubs in this chain across the county. She also gave me a sheet on which I could record my name and phone number so I could receive a call when they were open (they anticipated 11:00 today). They would also credit me for the lost day.

I wrote down my number and left, too thrown off to ask what precisely constituted "fire department activity" (a fire? failed inspection? a fundraising dunk tank ruptured and flooded the spin-bike room?). No sense in getting angry at them — hell, I could've lost a club, and they or their coworkers could've lost their jobs or lives. Not much else I could do, as pissed as I was, aside from slamming my front door upon returning home. I spent a fruitless hour trying to fall back asleep before arising at 6:00 to fuck around on the Net for a stretch, still stewing a bit over the lost opportunity.

But I have to trust myself that I will be able to overcome one day of interruption. Eventually, I will get a cold, or some other illness, that will force me to stay home for a day or two. All I need to do is see how much muscle I have left to work with, adjust the weights accordingly, and forge ahead. My weight didn't change between today and yesterday, and my eating plan was within tolerances on Monday and Tuesday, so I've done all I can. I did let a weekend indulgence — homebrewed coffee — creep into this morning's intake as a way to soak my frustrations. If I eat properly, hit the gym tomorrow (or maybe even sneak a cardio session in tonight if they're open), and work with what muscles I've got, I should do well this week. I'm looking at a loss of 4.5 lb. since the first day of the 30x40 challenge, and 9 lb. since my 232.5 peak after the birthday–July 4 weekend week of Cookie Monsterish consumption. With a projected goal of losing about a half-pound of fat per week, I'm on target.

It's the stress-relief aspect of the exercise that I will miss today. This work week so far, and all of last work week, have seen me in a state of simmering anger. My daily workouts have been the antidote so far, the high points of these days. And as Howard Dean and George McGovern will tell you, peaking early is no blessing. I have to sit through a staff meeting today, during which I will sorely miss the endorphins. So wish me strength until I can get to the gym and give myself the next good push in my ongoing physical rebirth, and set in pixels here the reasons why I feel more done than ever with this stop in my career.

Deus ex Machina, Hold the "Deus"

I DON'T BELIEVE IN A SUPREME being, or a team of them; or in fate, karma, destiny, or (reluctantly not) the Force. I believe in science, evidence, statistics, and probability. But I am willing to accept coincidence. Thus it was today.

May has been an up-and-down month for me at work. After again successfully striving with a deadline during the first week of this month, I was exceptionally burnt out. I took a "sick day" the Friday of that wek after a strong feeling of being "done" at work. You can read about some other random discontentment in that post too. Despite some later optimism about my new coworkers, it was tough to feel motivated during the first two weeks of this production cycle.

This was risky, even with the extra hands on deck, because we were facing a couple of artificial obstacles on the schedule. We lost two days midmonth while bringing the new gang up to speed on their duties, and I naturally took Memorial Day off. We will face higher postage costs if we don't get the magazine out by this coming Monday. We'd beaten this deadline the past three issues, despite being told about it at the last minute the first time, and with only two editors versus the usual five. But I was finally getting very fatigued over this breakneck pace.

I've been training the new staff at the same time as I've been giving them work to do. They seem to be fast learners, but because we have no departmental guidebook or procedure manual, I have to tutor from scratch. So I've had to interrupt my workflow to assist with this at irregular intervals. Did I mention that I despise training, even though I'm good at it? Yes. So throw that in as another leech of my will.

I also got my review around the middle of the month, which was quite good (I should know, I wrote most of it). After a couple of days of not hearing about any raise, I took the loathsome step of asking HR. I would rather argue with a steroid abuser over a parking space than speak with our HR person. Apparently, the small adjustment I got out of the blue at the beginning of the year was my 2008 raise; I won't see any result of the good review I'd just gotten until 2009. (Considering this person sent the review forms out late this year, a New Year's bump is not likely.)

Taking my own advice to ask for anything that might be available, I asked if there were any chance that part of the raise could be applied earlier, perhaps in recognition of all of the hard work I had done in keeping the book moving — which apparently is something even the top guy knows about and appreciates. All she did was shrug and say maybe my outgoing managing editor could appeal to her boss; but she said the economy, company budget, blah blah, blah, made this unlikely. Pissed but restrained, I pointed out that, because they hadn't been paying three higher, veteran-level, New York City–area salaries since the beginning of the year for my departed coworkers, there ought to be a little left over for an advance in good faith. This didn't register with the person, so I bailed on the further waste of time this had become and returned to my desk.

(I did have a fallback position. I summarized this exchange for my outgoing manager, and said that, since any early raise seemed unlikely, perhaps they might consider a few more paid vacation days. This is a briar-patch strategy; given the choice of time or money, I will take time any day. She said she'd look into it. At worst, they know I look out for my own ass.)

With all of this going on, the issue is not going to hit prepress on the date my eternally optimistic former boss has been trumpeting. It's something I've had to fight against each issue we've had to do together — we get to a certain point and I start warning folks we're going to have to suck it up and eat the extra postage — but three times so far, we've managed to make it under the deadline anyway. So my Cassandra routine has failed to sport fangs thus far. This time, I suspect, will be different. Because with the three days we've lost in the schedule, with all the training, and the time I've pissed away trying to squeeze a few more benefits out of the system, very little finished copy has transited my desk.

And of course there's one more major obstacle coming next week: I bail for at 5:00 Tuesday night to get things in order at home — and make some ridiculous effort to sleep — before the Vegas trip the next morning.

Not that I haven't been trying to hit the mark. I rescheduled an eye doctor appointment this Friday to devote more time to finishing the issue (and let my bosses know I'd done this). I had intended to stay late last Tuesday, but — once again — the building's AC died, and I was forced to leave on time, at less than full strength in any rate with a pounding, heat-induced headache. I stayed until 9:00 last night, with a break for dinner . . . and I did send finished work to folks at that hour to let them know I'm breaking my ass outside normal work hours. (Always document any extra effort.) Heretical for me, given my resolution this January not to emulate my departed manager's habit of clocking in one or two hours each night, to the point where she needed an anxiolytic to get through it.

Far more heretical was my plan to come in this Saturday for a spell. Packing for Vegas is a reflex by this point and can be done at a sprint. With rain in the works this Saturday, I thought — even if I couldn't completely get the issue out — I could put in a strong final effort to shove it along as far as possible, and then leave folks with a list of what still needs to be done. Plus the artist called in sick this morning after coughing like an exploding munitions factory through most of yesterday, leaving his work in the overburdened hands of another designer. So shit's getting slowed down as it is. And my hints about not making the deadline were not registering.

And this is where my aforementioned faith in faithlessness might be shaky. Early in the afternoon, we got a note from our facilities manager. They're doing massive work on the building this weekend; we need to be out promptly at EOB on Friday, and there will be no admittance throughout the weekend, nor any access to our servers. So my plan to come in Saturday? Impossible.

Some might say God stopped the bullets. Others could claim a cosmic balance has compensated me for busting out a few extra hours last night. I will only go so far as to say, I appreciate the coincidence that this shutdown will keep me from working through Saturday. Any proximity on my part to the office will also be coincidence, and a transient one at that.

Penny for Some Thoughts at the Five and Dime

A HALF-DECAYED IRONING BOARD cover compelled me to walk to my local five-and-dime for a replacement. Coupons in our town savings mailer sweetened the deal: 15% off, which, combined with a stroll to the store instead of a drive, helped me stack monetary and gas savings. Keeping the spending local, rather than pouring it into a big-box store whose profits are counted out of state, also had appeal. This trip was dipped in win.

I combined this run with a drop-off of books at the library and a stop at the dry cleaners — another key coupon-use center — with some work shirts. Once at the five-and-dime, I wandered the ware-crammed aisles for a spell, eventually triangulating on the housewares via the kitchen goods. A display of various board covers awaited, as did someone who recognized me.

A woman in her fifties said, "I know you." I couldn't place her — a friend of my mother's? Local restaurant owner? Someone from a doctor's office? — so I let her continue. "We used to work together. I left [the company] in December."

I still didn't recognize her, not having memorized all the office names and faces by that point, but her citation of last-year's layoffs was recognition enough. She said she'd heard about the company's most recent play — the move of jobs to Central City — and added a depressing detail I hadn't heard: Those who did move out there would have their salaries cut to match the local market.

From my perusal of the Central City real estate guides placed in the lunchroom for those considering relocation, I had noticed a striking difference in rent and home prices. I'd suspected the new additions to my magazine staff would be paid less than the local veterans who'd left. The rents (about 50–70% what I'm paying here for the same digs; my full NJ rent would get a whole townhouse) and home prices (the bubble-inflated price of my parents' average suburban home on a quarter-acre would get a multiacre estate, an empty plot to McMansionize, or a palatial condo) listed in the guides confirmed this hunch. But somehow I didn't imagine they also would slash current salaries.

Back to my former coworker. I told her that few seemed up for the move, and that the head of one afflicted department estimated a zero-percent acceptance rate. In this light, I said, this effectively was another round of layoffs. She agreed and urged me to grab all I could. I mentioned I'd been through a layoff myself, so my current level of trust in any employer to provide long-term job security was nil, so I had been doing just that since my start. I also let her know how my new coworkers on the book all were hired in Central City, which made my retention mystifying and tenuous. She smiled and reiterated her "grab all I could" advice, adding that eventually we'd be able to lodge the remaining Tri-State Area employees in someone's house. Considering this is probably how we started up, I said, at least it would be a return to our roots. She laughed, and we parted ways.

That evening, I spent several hours reading about financial management and freelancing.

Not Sure How Many More Bullets I Can Dodge

IF THINGS CONTINUE AT WORK the way they've been going since the turn of the year, I'll be the only person in the office. Or at least this one.

Around 2:00 today, two messages went out to the staff. If you received the first one, you were called to a meeting at 2:30; I and the others who got the second one had to meet in the same place as the first group at three.

From past experience, you wanted to be in the second group. Last time they did this, the two meetings were launched so that the first bunch would be told of their layoff, and be packed and out the door, while the second bunch was being informed of their former coworkers' collective fate. Still, the cryptically brief note bore no information on why we would be meeting, so we were left to wonder.

I happened to pass the conference room while the first group was in session. No read on the faces; not excited, but not overly glum. Maybe the full story hadn't yet unfolded.

But I got a taste of what might be the topic of discussion when I hit the kitchen. I noticed five stacks of apartment- and home-finding guides on the sideboard, of the type usually found near the entrance of our local supermarkets. I passed without scrutinizing them at first as I got a can of Diet Coke from the fridge. On the return pass, I decided to look at one, to see how rents were doing in northern New Jersey during the collapse of the homebuying market.

Only this wasn't a New Jersey apartment guide. It was a Central City apartment guide.

All five of the guides were for Central City homes or apartments.

My guess: Some or all of us were going to be told our jobs were moving to Central City.

Although past experience told me that the second group to meet with the bigwigs was the one who was going to be OK — or at least better off by comparison — I knew that they had finally hired the last staffer the needed for my publication, out in Central City, the previous week. We were now at full strength again . . . and in far less time than I thought they'd need. And I could see no reason why they would persist in paying a New Jersey salary for a nonmanagement person when they could just as easily make a push to have me move, possibly knowing — from my earlier inquiry about COBRA — that I had displayed no particular fear over joblessness. By this method, they could "dismiss" me by offering me a go-away check, assuming I'd choose that and joblessness over moving.

Which is correct. My family and friends are here. Even if I didn't have either group, I can't easily conceive of an amount that would induce me to pull up my roots. Not before retirement age.

My hunch proved right. As I headed back to my desk, the first meeting broke up. I followed a couple of stunned-looking folks to a growing cluster of coworkers, who confirmed that production of several publications was to be consolidated in the Central City office, and the staffs could either move or take severance.

Long story short, my job is staying here, much to my surprise. The second group was indeed made up of folks slated to remain here.

I got assurances from two authorities (both parties to the note I sent around after my return from the hospital) that my presence in the office was very much desired and appreciated. I told one of these parties it was good to hear that, considering my review was on her desk.

I can only imagine how many folks will go along with this. This is a de facto layoff. The company had to know the majority of the people would say no. We're not an office of friendless orphans waiting for the next Pony Express recruiting drive.

So over the coming two months, a couple dozen folks will have the twin joys of helping to purge their cubes and departmental records of unneeded paper, back issues, and other impedimentia ahead of the planned subdivision of the office, and then themselves be purged.

I feel . . . lucky?

Three "FUCK!"s A Gallon

HOW SAD IS IT THAT all of my recent financial windfalls get grouped, in my mental budget, in the "use this to pay for gasoline" category?

In appreciation of the work that we did getting the last published issue of the magazine out under heavy fire, my managing editor gave me and the artist a $50 money card. In principle, I could use it in Las Vegas, spend it on some decent vacation clothing, dedicate it toward a digital camera — anything.

In practice, my first thought was, "I can actually fill up my car's gas tank!" rather than taking $20 sips each week to spread the Pain across multiple visits.

Same thing today, when I lugged a milk bottle full of small change (the quarters are reserved for laundry) to the bank. The $56.25 this yielded? Sure, I could drop it in my emergency fund. I could consider it found money and go nuts at a fairly decent restaurant. I could add it to my poker bankroll ahead of the hold'em binge in Sin City. Or just split it down the middle for Mother's and Father's Day gifts come those two holidays.

Nope. The trek to the bank took me past my local "cheap" gas station. There, I will have the pleasure, at my next fill, of being keistered for $3.24 for each gallon I buy, which will top out at about six gallons for the usual double-sawbuck sip. I can only imagine the $56 will go into my tank in part or full. (The quarter I'm still saving for the damn wash.)

I feel like fuckin' Mad Max crossing post–nuclear holocaust Australia, searching wrecked vehicles along the dusty Outback highways for traces of the precious juice. Only this isn't a sunbeaten dead continent I'm inhabiting; this is the last remaining superpower . . . granted, a superpower with track marks up and down its arms from skin-popping Chinese money and Wah'habist oil, but still, more or less the scuffed hulk of what we used to consider the primus inter pares of the First World.

If I'd have known, pre-$3/gallon, that gas would continue to spike, I'd have bought a clutch of gas cans, filled them while gas was "cheap," then lined them up in my parents' garage. If airlines and delivery services can hedge against commodity speculators dry-humping the cost oil, so can I. Ideally, I'd make like an Eighties-style apocalypse cult and build my own massive underground tanks, but I think you need a few thousand follower-zombies to help fund such an endeavor. I'm lucky if I can get dogs to come near me. And they don't carry cash.

You Are Not a Beautiful and Unique Snowflake

I'VE NEARLY COMPLETED TWO ISSUES of my publication at work as a solo act. Granted I have help from the remote managing editor (ME) as backup, but because she splits her time among three total pubs, I can only claim some of her attention. (Never mind that ours is the top biller, and therefore ought to command more than a third of the ME's time, but as I've written, that will change soon.)

Being virtually independent has taught me a couple of things in battlefield email and task management. I admit I flounder now and again. It's probably self-inflicted. I had to break myself of a bad list habit, in which I accreted item after item on successive sheets of note paper — taped together like some unending pact with an infernal Power — and inevitably failed to remove more than I added. I was doing nothing more than creating a massive excuse for inaction, and I eventually tore it up in a liberating orgy of confetti creation. (Only the building's sprinkler system kept me from torching it.)

I've been reading key articles on the 43folders.com site on email management, and I have dipped into The Four-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss, for tips on taming the attention-annihilating effects of a boss who communicates near-exclusively via scores of emails. Former Secretary of State Rumsfeld was infamous for (among other reasons best judged by some future Nuremberg trial) blitzing his minions with innumerable notes, a practice dubbed snowflaking. (I personally understand the use of snowflake in the Fight Club sense to "contextualize" a child or other person who believes themselves to be a unique creation; I suspect the same applies to these decillions of Rums-mails.) This is what the ME does, and the email chime is a gateway drug to inspiring in me a wicked fit of netsurfing through the blog feeds. I just give up on getting back on track and fuck around with the Internet for 5 minutes.

This is wrong. If I'm so goddamn important to the success of this pub that they are retaining me rather than moving my job to Central City or cutting me entirely, then I ought to be judged wise enough to govern access to my attention . . . especially when allowing an all-access pass to it trashes my attempts to concentrate solely on single tasks and push them to completion.

Likewise the Internet. What is there, really, out there that commands my aimless browsing attention? I find myself doing this when I come home from work and, fatally, on weekends. Rather than pushing myself into some productive activity, I'll linger to look at feeds and links, and poof! another 15 irreplaceable minutes of my life are gone.

Email. Blogs. Social networking. The whole Internet. Both tools. Not miracles. Not wholly, or in contemplation of any of its Hydra-like nodes, worth every superlative casually lobbed at it. Neither should claim any more attention over your day than is necessary to ask or answer a targeted question that you pose for yourself or are pitched. Are you really going to preside over your 90th birthday and tell the shining faces lining your banquet table that you are grateful for the 230 unread posts you had on this date in your Bloglines account, the thousands of undeleted and useless emails you accumulated at each work and home address, the faceless Facebook "friends" you stacked like lumber in your vital years?

I'm not letting any of that shit, nor their evangelical champions, drive me back into the fucking hospital.

How I Survived a Hell Week

THIS WAS A ROUGH WEEK at work, but I have survived it, perhaps even prospered because of it. Time will have to tell . . . most of which I plan to spend sleeping this week off.

With the excitement of wargaming at Amy and Ratatosk's and a Super Bowl win for the Giants under my belt, I was about as ready as I could be for the task of getting the magazine on press. I had been assigned to a software training class on Monday some months ago. Good topic, piss-poor timing. (I later learned the class was being given all week, and I could've deferred this until the magazine was put to bed. That cost me some tooth enamel.) The training did give the IT guys a chance to try and get either my or my supervisor's abandoned computer up to speed on displaying typefaces correctly. I was hoping to emerge from the class to find a functional system and to get this issue done and gone. I mostly had recovered from the shock of learning, the previous Friday morning, that the other editor would be leaving the company, but I'd barely been functional through that afternoon, so I needed to double-time it on the remaining items on my big page-status chart.

When I logged into email Monday morning before training, I found a note in which the troublesome managing editor (hereinafter ME) was making promises to the printer liaison that we'd be able to get the book out by Tuesday evening. No fucking way. I still had to edit and write a few pieces, because I had spent the previous workdays pushing anything already in proofs as far to being onpress as I could. (We send individual pages and runs of pages to prepress as we finish them, rather than sending one huge PDF produced in a single DTP document.) With me as the only person who could move proofs, my edit had to sit idle.

I sent (after several rewrites to preserve future employment) a note laying out for the managing editor how this was an impossible deadline, what with my heading into training and thus unable to polish off my remaining editing, to say nothing of approving typeset copy. Making these sort of promises without consulting those who would actually execute them has been one of the biggest complaints my departed or departing coworkers have had with the ME. It stems from her being remote (based in the Mid-Atlantic region) and passive (too ready to oblige superiors or outside contacts and too scared to take risks or piss off her subordinates) When she does this, one of us has had to contact her frantically to inform her of conditions on the ground and to propose a revised, realistic plan . . . and to urge her to issue a retraction to whoever she made the original promises. The sick thing is that the ME always yields to this pressure. One of my former coworkers tried to train her away from this behavior; finding it impossible, and sick of working around her to do good journalism, she left.

True to form, after reading my email, the ME reversed herself without objection and polled the staff about how a Friday-noon deadline would work. I immediately endorsed it. She also asked if my fellow editor could possibly help in any way. I realized that she could do an edit on one of my remaining pieces while I was engulfed in training, so I asked the editor, who was happy to help and got to work.

She had the piece edited by the end of the day, but my computer was still not showing signs of cooperating. IT wanted to gut an old Mac and install new memory into my former boss's system to make it work faster. (My own font problems went back to my date of hire as well and crop up now and again, never having been solved permanently.) This provided some backhanded satisfaction, as my boss had complained for months about this slow, buggy box, and now, when it was needed, it was biting them in the ass. Schadenfreude had to take a back seat to progress, though, and as I left Monday night, I wondered if I was going to come back to the IT equivalent of an operating theater, with the guts of several Macs strewn about the cube, and both techs elbows deep in the patient, trying to coax life back in with the right combo of parts and luck.

I began Tuesday with a visit to the gym and a trip to the polls for Super Duper Tuesday, to at least start the day with two positive moves forward, in my personal life if not at work. Wise choice. Neither computer was working 100% when I got there. I usually try not to get emotionally involved when I can't work due to technical issues. At my last two jobs, I often found it tough to suppress extreme rage and frustration when a dead computer or balky software ground my progress to a halt. I finally learned to view these moments as liberation . . . an ironclad excuse to live my life and feel no tie to labor. I took some of my most pleasant walks through NYC during such moments at my last job. Why grow enraged over shit I can't fix?

But that Tuesday morning — with all of the responsibility for closing the issue channeling through me, with no way to do my work, and a fixed deadline to which I'd consented looming — when the IT guy, my remaining co-editor, and a graphic designer who works with our artist all came to my cube to ask how I would proceed, I came perilously close to letting loose a Führerbunker-style rant on how truly fucked up the entire situation was.

I instead did the opposite: I knew if I raised my voice, not only would it solve nothing, I wouldn't be able to stop until someone either knocked me out or I had a stroke. So I all but whispered my thoughts on what we could do to get things moving. I asked the graphic designer (who would provide the insight into the font-management software the IT guy lacked) to take a look at my system and see if she could get the typefaces working permanently. I requested that my fellow editor send the piece she'd polished to the author for approval. I then laid out for them what I planned to do for the remaining parts of the issue once I was able to work on my computer again. At that point, I got up and took a walk around the parking lot to let everyone work and just get the hell away from the situation.

The graphic designer is the hero of the story, because she got my font-management software working permanently, and I was able to work in Quark for the rest of the week without a single glitch. She also stepped up when the artist succumbed to the flu midweek and did all the prepress prep on our side he ordinarily would do. Once my computer was working, I moved decisively through the remaining page proofs, completed my editing, laid in the last text, and sent the final pages to prepress by the deadline on Friday. I did break my 2008 rule about not staying late or coming in early by arriving at the office on Thursday at 6:45 a.m., which paid off handsomely, and for which I compensated by vegging during the bulk of Friday afternoon after the issue went out. So the time balance sheet is even.

I can't say the same about my fitness level. I had to skip Thursday and Friday's gym visits (both lifting days), and my nutrition was abhorrent. Tuesday night, I succumbed to fatigue at Friendly's for diner-style food and a sundae. About the only highlight of the week was lunch on Friday, when I and the remaining edit and design staff took my departing partner out to lunch. When a bacon cheeseburger with fries is the nutritional highlight of your week, it's time to get control of your eating habits. This week's utter imbalance just spilled out of the workplace and hit just about everything else in my life, and although I know I can get back on track and recover the gains I'd made over the previous couple of weeks, it ticks me off to have to do so.

The sad irony is that, having carried this task out successfully under pressure, I more or less demonstrated my qualifications for my boss's position. It's still open, though I don't know if we've gotten any bites for it. I think the other folks who've left my department expect me to follow them.

Now, I must say that once we got things moving on Tuesday, the ME was nothing but supportive until the issue got out the door. She even put together one of the last pages to spell me while I completed some other tasks. She never tried to tell higher-ups we'd be done sooner, or to ask me questions about anything that didn't pertain to the issue and the deadline. I was left to concentrate solely on that goal. When I got a moment to compare this headlong rush to the finish with previous ones, I noticed I did far less complaining about the circumstances I found myself in than my former boss did. She used to come in a little late if the ME had thrown too many curves at her the previous day; and during schedule crunches, I'd see her speaking to one of the two other editors about how impossible she saw the situation, and how our ME's predecessor had been so much better, and how the ME didn't speak up to prevent the firing of the intern we apparently had to handle common paper flow, etc., etc. . . .

It was a bit of a revelation. I guess being in the thick of it during the fall, and especially when my boss's frustration rose after our clinical editor left, gave me a touch of Stockholm syndrome, which made such a conclusion tougher to reach. Funny that it emerged only after going through the fire. Maybe calling the shots alone was the key. I knew ranting about things on Tuesday morning would fix nothing, so I didn't bitch about what everyone already knew. Though I did touch base with associated folks in the office who knew the situation, I did so just to get out of my cube for 5 minutes and to brief them, not to spend a half hour complaining, only to feel pressured to make this time up after hours. Instead, I just let them know I was making progress, that the deadline was still Friday at noon in case anyone asked, and that I'd ask for help if I got in a jam. Then I let them get back to what they were doing.

At my last job, I was familiar with the challenge of a regularly scheduled crazy schedule. From 9/27/05:

For 3 years, I was the designer on a twice-monthly accounting newsletter with a 2-day turnaround. To get it on press by deadline, I had to come in early, stay late, or both. It was also packed with charts and intricate tables, many of which needed to be crafted from scratch. I would receive files, set all else on my desk aside, typeset like a maniac, and swap proofs and corrections in a frenzy of haste and tension to hit that press time. I crafted pie charts before the sun flared up the glass-and-steel skin of Manhattan. I cursed at a balky computer in an echoing empty office while twilight spread ouside my window. I watched coffee carts open for business in the morning and greeted cleaning staff in the evening. Amid office parties, I put on headphones and blocked out the bleating of my co-workers as I turned poorly formatted Excel tables into well-groomed columns of data. No oversight, no submitting it to my bosses to inspect before press, no contact with my fellow designers, just me, a pile of text, and a tight deadline.

I suspect this sort of trial granted me the skill this week to cut all bullshit and focus on the finish, two things my boss seemed unwilling to do. The question is, can I succeed where my former workmates didn't in making my workplace serve me while putting out an admirable product? Would it be more worth it in the role of my former boss?

Some things to think about while restoring myself at the gym later today. I just don't think the move to that company that seems to be siphoning off my coworkers should be as kneejerk as they seem to think it would be.

Second Chance for Michael Vick's Abused Pit Bulls

THE NEW YORK TIMES HAS a heartbreaking story today about the pit bulls that bullethole-deficient asshole Michael Vick bred for dogfighting. Those able to be recuperated now live at an animal sanctuary on money Vick was forced to disgorge to support their upkeep and rehabilitation. But the physical and mental effects of the abuse their handlers and dogfighting opponents inflicted won't fade easily:

A quick survey of Georgia, a caramel-colored pit bull mix with cropped ears and soulful brown eyes, offers a road map to a difficult life. Her tongue juts from the left side of her mouth because her jaw, once broken, healed at an awkward angle. Her tail zigzags.

Scars from puncture wounds on her face, legs and torso reveal that she was a fighter. Her misshapen, dangling teats show that she might have been such a successful, vicious competitor that she was forcibly bred, her new handlers suspect, again and again.

But there is one haunting sign that Georgia might have endured the most abuse of any of the 47 surviving pit bulls seized last April from the property of the former Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick in connection with an illegal dogfighting ring.

Georgia has no teeth. All 42 of them were pried from her mouth, most likely to make certain she could not harm male dogs during forced breeding.

I haven't even dared to check out the accompanying audio slide show.

And Then There Was One

NOT SURE HOW I CAN finish this post in one shot, because thinking about the situation behind it makes me want to put my head between my legs until I can breathe deeply again, but things at my once-pleasant job have gone just about completely off the deep end. The remaining non-manager on the magazine — the other senior editor — has given her 2 weeks' notice.

Things were frenzied enough during the past couple of weeks with my supervisor gone. We lost the first two days of this week to a training symposium, which — though very interesting and crammed with useful ideas — took me away from my work. Owing to lax practices, I had to help clarify some issues pertaining to the continuing professional education we offer in the magazine, both by fixing a disclosure omission from a previous issue, and (after spotting the same problem in the current issue) tracking the same sort of info for a current contributor so I wouldn't have to hear about this from our certification partner 4 months down the road. Each time I had to defuse such a bomb, I was taken away from completing the current-month issue, which just gets more grievously delayed. I did pause briefly on Thursday to email my friend and supervisor from the last job to see if she'd won Mega Millions so I could marry rich, but sadly Fortune has not rained any manna onto her aside from her outstanding brains and looks. As I have neither to offer in return, I returned to my mounds of work.

Friday was fucked from the git-go—forgot my headphones on the way to the gym, crampy muscles, slow going getting out of the house to work, fonts blowing up in Quark after an "upgrade," and a work bathroom that reeked of freshly decanted hurl—so when the other senior editor waved me into an empty office at midmorning, I knew what was coming. She's leaving for the same reason as the other two staffers: our mutual department head. I have to wonder what's keeping the management at this joint from noticing the pattern.

Said department head called me later on in the day, after she'd gotten word that I was in the know, to let me know they weren't killing the job or going to dismiss me. By that point, I was in such shock that I wouldn't have complained if they had. Compared to my mental state during the day of my layoff, I was utterly derailed.

Keep in mind that current conditions of "doing more with less" have already cost one of my coworkers his well-being. The staff artist was so wound up with stress from inheriting the work of two laid-off fellow designers, and the prospect of switching away from our tried-and-true workflow in favor of new text-handling software and from Quark to InDesign, that he blacked out in the middle of a training class. He's not the first person I've known to have the pressures of a job contribute to a breakdown.

With my computer snarled due to the font issue, the future at the magazine looking even grimmer than when my former boss struggled to get it published a year ago while down only one person, and the possibility of having to return to the job market in the early phase of a recession, I felt myself getting a little panicky, with shortness of breath and lightheadedness similar to what I felt at the WFMU Record Fair. This time I couldn't attribute it to a caffeine overdose. I rode out the rest of the day in a busy haze, trying to keep things moving by working on our artist's computer, and fielding a blizzard of emails from our boss — the cause of our problems — without answering any of them with a Harlan Ellison–like peroration of invective.

I left under a driving rain and drove home feeling like I'd been awake for 3 days. Cooking dinner was a laughable prospect. I wasn't even hungry. I posted my progress report, then finally wandered out onto the road, only to drive to a number of possible eateries and then just keep rolling, not wanting to take the effort even to look at a menu. Once back home, I finally calmed down enough to read several chapters of a book, then hit the hay.

I didn't really feel human today until I got two meals and an hour of cardiovascular exercise under my belt. I suppose getting a check for almost $28 out of the blue (security deposit interest) didn't hurt. I'm putting the next steps entirely out of my mind, and concentrating on light entertainments like a game night with Amy and Ratatosk and the Super Bowl tomorrow. I don't intend to stay in any situation that makes me unwell mentally or physically, and if the quesos grandes have some problem with that, well, they can add a fourth position to the want list.

A Noun, a Verb, and 9/11

NOSFERATU-LOOKING PHILANDERER RUDY GIULIANI is once again proving Senator Joe Biden's statement above — which describes every sentence out of Rudy's mouth — to be spot-on. Even in waving off his sixth-place finish in Iowa — falling behind even Freikorpsführer Ron Paul — he had to conjure up his sole reason for persisting on the American stage.

Originally, Rudy The G wasn't going to campaign in New Hampshire, trusting instead to make a strong showing in Florida. As Iowa's caucuses loomed, however, he apparently found it necessary to buttress his "Florida Firewall" with some face time in Live Free or Die country. So it was natural that folks might believe he would now have more interest in Iowa's doings as well.

When asked what his reaction was, from afar, to his result in Iowa, and his slippage in New Hampshire, Giuliani said, "None of this worries me. . . . September 11th, there were times I was worried. . . ."

Is this what this whore has fallen to? Even in defeat, he has to rip this scab off again? This from the man who seemingly wants to accelerate our slide to the 1984 scenario, in which we are permanently at war with, well, everyone. As we learned from that novel, repetition of slogans eventually anesthetizes a population. So we really shouldn't be surprised to see him follow the script of some of his jackbooted predecessors.

Siege Interrupted by Sick Days

SECOND OF TWO SICK DAYS today. I hate being home and doing nothing. My ordinarily inviting apartment becomes a tomb after two days of quarantine, and the Internet is a grim hallway of stale content not designed to be viewed 1,000 times per day by a shut-in.

Worst of all is not going to the gym. My last visit was Wednesday morning, when I woke up with a scratchy throat that surely foreshadowed a cold. My nutrition intake for the previous four or five days had been scattered, so my muscles were a bit weaker than I would have liked. Going to the gym Thursday morning — by which point the cold had hit full force — was out of the question. Though it's not the most serious cold I've ever had (no real fever at all, little nasal congestion), it was still enough to knock me out for 12 hours or so between Wednesday and Thursday (aside from waking up briefly to call in sick). Indeed, I'm contemplating a nap right now.

This is my first stretch of sick time at the current job, and it couldn't have come at a worse time for the magazine. But I can't help that. Sick days are there to be taken when you're sick. People who go in ill are crazy. All you're gonna do is make others sick catch something worse yourself, do crappy work with little attention on anything besides your own miserable physical shape, or all of the above. I've shaken off a couple of run-down stretches where I successfully repelled others' travel-induced illnesses, but this time, there was no sense in gritting my teeth, going in sick, and struggling to do even a mediocre job for what might end up being a half day anyway.

Besides, I have an event for which I need to get better as soon as possible. Not just Christmas, which I shall spend with my parents. I got a call last night from Felix's best man, who said that the groom-to-be's bachelor party would be this coming Saturday. At this stage, it seems the monstrous neon chaos of Atlantic City will get the nod as venue. With any luck, all I'll be doing by that point is coughing out the last of the congestion and not picking up some grim virus from the casino chips. The next 12 hours will be critical in seeing how fit I am to indulge in stag duties this third time in 2007. Keep your fingers crossed — it's been a while since I placed any money at risk, and I've got the yen to joust with chance. Also like Moe Szyslak, to eat a steak the size of a toilet seat.

Finally, a Simpsons Reference Even I Don't Get

LAST NIGHT ON The Simpsons, Bart made a reference to something called "crumping" as a way to win back the attention of his classmates, who now found the apparently orphaned Milhouse cool. (I'm spoiling nothing because it was an otherwise crappy episode.) Bart then started some sort of urban-style dancing of the You Got Served/"You Got F'd in the A" type. This failed to sway the other kids, whereupon Marge crows, "I'll crump with ya, Bart!" Whereupon Marge began doing the same dance.

For the first time in 18 years of watching the show, I had no fucking idea what they were talking about.

I thought maybe this had some connection to crunk, which I do know about (yet another sub-sub-genre of rap now immortalized by a couple of Dave Chapelle bits). Other than that, and the use of crump as an onomatopoetic noun in World War I for heavy artillery, I was drawing a complete blank.

I had to go online to unwrap this mystery. There, I learned that it's called krumping, and that it's indeed a form of dancing descended from breakdancing. How many other viewers got this reference, I have no idea. Not a moment destined to enter the long and varied halls of heavily quoted Simpsons moments, I'll warrant.

Still made me feel just a little old, though.

Picture Discs, Palpitations, and Petty Theft

I JUST HAD A day that went from fun to frightening to ridiculous. At least I get another hour of sleep tonight to put it past me.

Today was my first of two days of volunteer work at the WFMU Record and CD Fair. I had booked just about the entire day, beginning with the earliest shift, the security patrol. Record dealers are admitted at 7 a.m. on the Saturday and Sunday of the fair to set up their displays in the 3 hours preceding general admission. At night, the hall is locked up, so dealers leave their wares on the tables, to avoid dragging them back home, to storage rentals, or motel rooms (we get dealers from up and down the Eastern Seaboard). However, the FMU staff realized not so long after starting the fair that, if left unwatched, early-arriving dealers will uncover their fellow dealers' record crates and burrow through them like packs of curious primates. With records worth up to three figures in some of these crates, theft is a very real worry.

So the early-Saturday and early-Sunday security volunteer shift was born. My job today (and tomorrow, if I make it in) was to walk the Metropolitan Pavilion floor while the record dealers carted in their gear; to ensure that nobody's crates were rifled through unless that table's dealer was present; and to ensure that anyone walking around was wearing either a WFMU volunteer sticker or a dealer badge, was an FMU staffer, or worked for the Metro Pavilion. (Oh, and also to discipline the occasional indoor smoker.)

I therefore arose today at 5:00 for my drive into Chelsea. I got out of the house at ten to six, but I was a little worried about a report of the 495 helix being closed down for work and traffic to NYC being routed onto local streets. This still left the Holland Tunnel as an alternative to the Lincoln, which — after spotting a huge mass of cars stopped on 495 after getting off of 3 — I reached via the back route through a just-awakening Union City. I still hit the fair at just after 7:00, a bagel with cream cheese, a Diet Coke, and half a Trader Joe's green drink (one of those Naked/Bolthouse Farms clones) under my belt.

The security shift went very smoothly. Nearly all the dealers were wearing their badges, and I didn't have to guide anyone away from untended crates. The only knock is that it's a little tiring, because one is walking around more or less constantly for 2½ hours. I did grab a break at 9:00 for my annual descent into misguided food, a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich with coffee. Where would NYC be without this delicious but deadly breakfast combo? I never eat this sort of thing except at the Record Fair. The FMU Special Events Coordinator, Mike, not only joined me in this but sprung for it like the mensch that he is. This sort of camaraderie is what erases the fatigue of a slow-motion marathon around the joint as the dealers attack their fellows' crates with pirahña-like ferocity.

As admission time neared, I switched over to cash box duty at the ticket booth. I deliberately chose a second shift that would allow me to sit for a while and give my dogs a rest. The Record Fair is very popular among the collecting community, and due to sympathetic mentions in the NYC area news, and our ads in the Voice and the New York Press (complete with discount admission coupon), our casual foot traffic is thick. So when we threw open the doors, a mass of cold, vinyl-hungry folks was already lined up down the block. The swift blur of making change for what felt like hundreds of music lovers was a sharp contrast to my quiet pacing around the hall some hours before.

One o'clock rolled around surprisingly swiftly, and I was relieved shortly before the hour to take on my third shift, at the WFMU dollar-record tables. FMU has three main points of sale at the fair: cheapo cutout vinyl at a buck a record, more expensive commercial or collectible records and CDs, and station-branded items from the prize lists of past fundraising Marathons. All proceeds from these sales directly fund WFMU (as does the admission fee). Before reaching my post, I hooked into the Audiovisual Lounge (where we show movies for tired shoppers) to grab some free coffee and an Oreo. I wasn't lunch hungry just yet, but I wanted to get my next daily dose of caffeine on schedule.

The dollar record crates were seething with people flipping through them, half of them dealers, occasionally yanking out an album to inspect the track listing or the grooves themselves, then either sliding it back in to flip through some more or placing them on growing piles of must-haves. Space was tight among the crates, with folks queuing up behind the searchers, anxiously seeing their chance to belly up and mine out a hidden treasure. As these quests tended to take some time, I was actually far less busy here than at the front door, so I finally decided to skip out and grab lunch. Two Boots Pizza has the food concession at the fair, but to my discontent they were out of plain slices. I recalled the proximity of a Chipotle Fresh Mexican joint, so out I went with visions of lime-spiced chips and a steak burrito dancing in my head. These I got, along with a Diet Coke.

About an hour after downing this, I noticed my pulse was up. I could feel it in my lips and chest. It felt like I had just finished some moderate exercise. I found this odd, then alarming after it didn't settle down for several minutes. I excused myself from my post and took my pulse with some difficulty (a nurse I'm not). Somewhere around 90. I finished out my shift, then wandered over to Volunteer Director Scott to see if he still needed anyone for the final shift of the day. He said they could use a second person to watch over the exhibit of flexi-discs we had in one corner (you know those plastic records you used to get in magazines or on cereal boxes? Imagine these in every size, color, and product-shilling capacity across something like 120 square feet of wall.). I agreed, figuring this spell of tachycardia would either pass or not, and that I could leave early if so.

A brief pair of flashbacks. That morning, when I got out of my car in Chelsea, I did the usual pocket-pat many men do to ensure we have our gear. My keys, cellphone, and dough were present, but I had left my wallet at home. I had driven all the way into NYC without my license, to say nothing of my healthcare cards, AAA ID, or my credit or ATM cards. I had a couple of hundred in cash, so life in Manhattan or return therefrom wouldn't be hindered by being broke. But unless you've done this, you can't imagine how naked I felt for a moment.

Now keep in mind, I also parked quite close to the entrance of the hall, the streets being fairly uncluttered save for some digging down the street. My parking luck calls to mind George Costanza's "fortune" at finding a spot right in front of the hospital, only to have a jumper crash through the roof of his car. In my case, after I heard a number of emergency vehicles close to the hall, I wandered outside to see my car surrounded by cones and blocked in by Office of Emergency Management and Con Ed trucks, and a rush of water flowing under my vehicle and down the street. According to my Web research, the contractor struck a water main. I checked on my car a couple of times in the next hour, and when I watched the various trucks move out of the way to let another trapped car escape, and they gratefully let me back my car into the space thus vacated, I relaxed a little . . . until I tried to restart the car to adjust it again and the key wouldn't turn in the lock. I tried it a couple of times, then figured, between my stint at the fair, the time the city agencies would need to fix the leak, and the need to get back in to keep working the door, I wasn't going anywhere at the moment, I decided not to think about it.

Or did I? Between my wallet being a state away, and my car possibly being stuck, I already may have been on edge.

Not that I felt it for the bulk of the day. Which is why, when I took a seat next to the flexi-disc museum, and felt very conscious of my breathing, and a fullness in my chest, in addition to the continuing tachycardia, I started to worry. Naturally, like anyone near middle age with a spare tire, I began ticking off the symptoms of heart attacks. No pain in my chest, just that fullness. No sweating or chills. No pain anywhere else, especially not radiating through my jaw or arms. Of course, merely thinking about this list was making me jumpier, and I didn't need to find a vessel to know that my heart was still thumping away.

There was an alternative. Panic attacks run in my family. Though I don't believe the syndrome was popularly called "panic disorder" in the 1980s as much as it is today, both my mother and her father were treated for the symptoms I was experiencing. Their cases were much more severe, and they both received tranquilizer prescriptions . . . but not before both of them thought they were having heart attacks and had to wear tape-recorder-sized heart monitors to screen out possible cardiac causes.

I took a couple of breaks to air out my head in the chill November afternoon. Both times, I felt a little less panicky, though my pulse rate didn't drop much. I could breathe more easily, and my palms stopped the bit of sweating they were doing. I wasn't dizzy or nauseated or anything, and I didn't have the sort of sense of impending doom that both panic-disorder and infarct victims report.

What I was now consciously nervous about was my health cards being a state away and the reaction my parents might have to calling home about this. The license I was willing to gamble on not being pulled over while returning home, the money cards I didn't give a shit about, but the health card was quite different. In my slow slide into middle age, I've taken to bringing my health card with my driver's license to the gym. It's a second form of ID at minimum, and it reduces possible hassles at the hospital, to say nothing of its billing department. After hearing the process of determining a patient's insurance status as a wallet autopsy, I need that card to bypass red tape for me when I can't do it myself.

As for my parents, especially my still panic-vulnerable mother . . . all I'll say is that when my father's had to go into the hospital now and again, she's been a nervous wreck. The reaction to my admission might be a second admission that night. Not that I'd keep myself out of the hospital for that reason, but it would be something else weighing on me while riding in an ambulance or sitting in the ER.

The symptoms returned both times I resumed my duties, passing through thick masses of shoppers, dealers, and taggers-along in an increasingly hot and loud event hall. By 5:30, I decided to terminate this final, optional shift. I checked in with FMU staff (not giving the exact reasons why) and went straight to Duane Reade for a bottle of St. Joseph's baby aspirin. I flashed back to childhood sick days as I chewed up and dry-swallowed two on the return walk to the car. If this was the Big One, I at least wanted to open my vessels up just a bit before it hit in full force.

My condition was lessening by the time I reached my car, which was now unblocked. The key turned easily in the lock this time. I eased past the watery wound in the street, and, after consulting traffic radio, proceeded directly to the Lincoln Tunnel, Jersey, and home. My heartbeat, respiration, and chest pressure resolved themselves by the time I was through the tunnel, replaced by far more reasonable tiredness (from the early waking time, the dearth of sleep from the previous week, and the aftereffect of so much goddamn adrenaline in my system).

The ride back to my apartment took just under an hour, not too bad for that time of night. I felt for a pulse when I got out of the car, and took my difficulty in even locating it as a good sign. My lungs filled easily with refreshing autumn-night air. I wasn't dizzy, in pain, or sensing impending doom. Truthfully, I was beginning to wonder what the hell had gotten into me. I've been in big crowds — casinos, sports stadiums, packed trains, Lollapalooza — without panic before.

Could it have been the two coffees? I don't drink much more than a cup every 6 to 8 weeks or so. My usual caffeine dose is three cans of Diet Coke a day, at 34 or so mg of caffeine per can. Between 6 a.m. and 2 p.m., I had had probably about 30 oz. of coffee, containing around 500 mg, in addition to a 20-oz. Diet Coke in the morning and a large Chipotle cup of the shit with lunch. My symptoms were not dissimilar to those of what the dubious slough of Wikipedia dubs caffeine intoxication.

Either way, I was feeling much better, if concerned, as I entered my building's vestibule. I looked instinctively for mail and any packages, especially as I anticipated a replacement box of dishwashing soap from the folks at Seventh Generation.

What I found was a shipping box, opened, lined with packing material, from Seventh Generation, with my name as addressee.

This failed to register for a minute, then I picked up the nearly empty box, reinspected it, and came to the inescapable conclusion that someone had stolen my dishwashing soap. Even setting aside the possibility that the thief had no idea what Seventh Generation was, you'd think they would have left the box there upon discovering that the contents had no value beyond the kitchen, that it wasn't a blank hard drive or car stereo. No. They took it anyway.

The day had taken a hard turn into the ludicrous. But at least I wasn't dying, or at least not yet.

I knocked on the door of the resident manager to begin the reporting procedure. No reply. With the town municipal building in eyesight of my complex, I saw no reason not to file the police report right then. Hell, mail tampering is a Federal crime. So it was that I spent the next 15 minutes or so reporting the theft of my dishwashing soap.

As I suspected, there was little the police could immediately do. I figured this was most useful in getting the act on record, or adding it to an existing record, so a pattern would develop of any thefts in the building. Years ago, some fucking nutcase stole dozens of parcels over time from the vestibule. Rumor and truth may be mingling in my memory, but I recall reading a blotter report in the local paper describing the cops finding no utilities and lots of garbage in the perp's apartment, in addition to a dead letter office's worth of jacked FedEx and UPS boxes. But this person and our complex parted permanently thereafter.

The vestibule where parcels are dropped is not being a locked door. This could have been done by a passerby instead of a resident. After I heard about the nutcase, I had all Amazon and other gear sent to my workplace or my parents' house. Foolishly, I thought a box from Seventh Generation, marked as such obviously or not, that made sifty noises when inverted, would be safe. I was wrong.

With the theft on record, I returned home, still feeling good, not even feeling my blood pressure rise as something this intrusive and thoughtless might otherwise evoke, and tried the resident manager again. Nothing; no light in the peephole or from under the door. I will try again tomorrow and follow up by contacting the management company directly. The vestibule has a camera, which is rumored not to be hooked up to anything (it was billed as being closed circuit and accessible through our TVs, so the typically elderly residents here could scope callers, but this was bullshit), so either someone knew this and stole my soap anyway, or somehow didn't see it and was possibly captured on videotape. I should call the cops tomorrow to note the presence of the camera, if there's any chance this was recorded. I may have been out some soap, but the last thief got someone's golf club, not a cheap item. With the holidays coming, so will all manner of gifts, and if these packages don't arrive with a signature due, who knows how many will go missing?

So that's my day. I reported the same info to FedEx, probably only to the effect of getting Seventh Generation a refund on their postage and maybe a settlement claim (it wasn't their fault at all, and not really FedEx's fault, that this package was intercepted). I spent a little time on WebMD checking panic and MI symptoms and generally feeling asymptomatic, if, as I said, somewhat tired. That "somewhat" has become "very," and I will head to bed soon. I've rested my tender feet and had a protein shake with a banana, a cup of frozen blueberries, the rest of the green drink, and a scoop of whey, just to have something simple and healthful on my stomach, and it's been digesting without controversy while I've been writing.

If I feel jumpy at all when I awaken, I will regretfully call and email the gang at FMU to let them know why I've opted out. Nothing, not even the freeform station of the nation, is more important than my cardiac health. If I go, and there is any recurrence at all, I will jet. (My wallet is already under my keys so it doesn't stay behind tomorrow, whether I go to Chelsea or Valley Hospital.) I am very much looking forward to a longer sleep tonight, but even more to waking up tomorrow and setting the bizarre physiological and criminal-justice events of today completely behind me. I'll settle just for the waking-up part.

Autumn Missing, Presumed Dead

THIS IS THE SECOND of two days on which the mornings have been swathed in dense fog. Driving to work yesterday was a bizarre experience for an October. Most un-autumnal.

I would expect those walls of mist to accompany me on a late-March commute. I've seen thick fogs arise from fields old snow along my commutes through the Meadowlands or past the golf course in Emerson. With just the right temperature and humidity, a thick layer of vapor enshrouds these low-lying areas. Seeing this, I would half-expect a mounted war party to emerge from it, armor damp and ringing in the morning air, piercing the fog and centuries of time to invade the present day.

In March I expect it. With snow on the ground I expect it. Not in early October. Not in the fall.

We had a fleeting week of true fall weather some time ago. Mornings braced the skin and nights brought cool relief from three awful months. Autumn has been usurped by waves of summer-temperature days, and with it the asinine spectacle of running the air conditioner in a two-digit month.

If I wanted 80º temperatures at sundown, I'd take advantage of the subprime meltdown and move to Las Vegas. As someone who likes the seasonal swirl of falling leaves and the double-whammy of cider and doughnuts fresh from the farmstand, however, my place is here, much as I love the Neon Havens.

Vexing to say the least. I expect a confused polar bear loping through town is next.

House of Corruption

AFTER A FRANTIC WEEK, I'm looking forward to a very slow weekend. I have nothing in particular booked, although in the literal sense of that word, I do have a book at the local library waiting for me, as well as some money, and an overdue book, that I owe them. Should've returned the book earlier once I (a) realized it wasn't suited to my current baseline mood and (b) got sucked into the other book I borrowed at the same time as I got this one, which incidentally has me thiiiiiiis close to punching holes in my drywall.

I don't write about what I'm reading as much as I ought to. It would be good to look back at the end of a year and see exactly what reading material I digested over the course of 12 months. A few weeks ago, I reread Inside the Third Reich, Albert Speer's autobiography. I had found a used hardback of this — an epic peek through the eyes of Hitler's chief architect and Minister of Armaments into the banality and bombast of Nazi Germany — years ago at the last used-book shop in this area. I miss that little literary nook. In the last days of its life, I scored a Mafia exacta, grabbing Wiseguy (which found movie fame as Goodfellas) and Donnie Brasco. That shopping expedition inspired the following words in a 100 Words entry from around that time:

There’s always a spot of guilt about shopping at a store going out of business. Especially when it’s the first and last time you will patronize it. You wander among the discount tags, forcing detachment. Lonely creaks from the hardwood floor, must wafting from denuded shelves, books freed from their imprisoning neighbors, You know the shopkeeper is watching you, trying to curve his face into a helpful smile as he did in better times, perhaps wishing you had been a regular. Don’t draw attention to the discounts when you check out. He’s been through enough. Celebrate, instead, in the car.

Now most of my book diet comes from the library, and — taking me back to the perforated drywall — I am now reading House of Bush, House of Saud, by Craig Unger. I've known about this book since it came out, and I even borrowed it shortly after I first heard about it on Dave Emory's conspiracy radio program on WFMU. I never got around to it at the time, but recently it came back to the front of my mind (possibly to enjoy the empty space), so I snagged it.

I may write it up more fully here when I'm done, but the basic point is that the close relationship between the two families has compromised America's objectivity in dealing with the Middle East, in particular in detecting, tracking, and prosecuting terrorists and those who fund them. It also highlights the deceptively plugged-in, Establishment reality behind the bumbling, crotchety one-termer we know as the Elder George (H. W.) Bush. Additionally, the book has detailed the intimate dealings between the Saudi royal family and the construction empire of the bin Laden clan, which was valued highly enough to receive a commission to refurbish the hallowed sites of Mecca and Medina.

There's also a chapter on how the Saudis invested in the Carlyle Group, the massive private-equity firm and access-rental entity for industry to tap former governmental figures on how best to sell to the Federal Government. Bushes 41 and 43 both served on its board, and both the House of Saud and Saudi Binladen Group invested with it.

I'm only halfway through this book, and already I want to move to New Zealand. Is there a thriving American expat community there? Would I even want to hang out with a clutch of my former kin? The last place I need to go is a bar or coffee shop where all I hear is bitching about the place I've left. I can see myself going very native, very quickly. Ah, but there's that whole leaving the Bill of Rights behind, and of course there's the question of what I could possibly offer the fine natives of that remote land by way of talent. It's not like 1920s Paris, when Americans could just swan about from salon to zinc bar, plunging into neurasthenic paroxysms at the thought of the Great War. The Kiwis will expect me to work.

And with the Rings films long done, they ain't hiring orcs.