Well, folks, it's time. Life begins at 25.

Today I take the big plunge, pack up my life and head out to the West Coast to start over. A new job, a new city, a new ocean. And I feel better about doing this, because as I just wrote in a friend's comment section, "life is too short for compromises." If I weren't doing this, I'd feel like a hypocrite for saying it.

By the way, there seems to be some confusion as to how I'm getting out there. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm not flying -- I am driving. Yes, the road warrior hits the great highways and byways of America to travel 3000+ miles by himself. As such, I expect that I probably will not get Internet access for the next week while I'm on the road, but you never know where I might find a small cybercafe and need a break from all that driving.

There really are so many things that I want to say right now, but it's all emotions and I'm having a hard time putting them into words. So I'll simply say this: catch you on the flipside.

I've seen a few other people posting 100 things about themselves. I figure since I'll be gone for a week, I might as well come up with something interesting to keep y'all occupied for a while... Actually, now that I think about it, I recall doing a "25 Things About Keith" entry for my 25th birthday a while back. Oh well, I'll do this anyways. 1. I've never broken any bones.
2. I've never needed any major surgery or hospitalization either.
3. My dad -- a doctor -- sent me to school one year a day before my birthday by dismissing my laryngitis and complaints of not feeling well by saying "you're fine, get to school." I came home later that day with a 103 degree fever. I still remind him of it.
4. My hair grows incredibly quickly. I need a haircut every 3-4 weeks.
5. I can't sleep on my back for some reason. I almost always fall asleep on my stomach with my arm under my head with the pillow in between them.
6. In high school, there were a good number of people who knew me only by my nickname but didn't actually know what my real name was.
7. I have made more mix tapes and CDs for both me and other people than anyone I know. People I don't know ask me for mixes because they've heard mixes I've made for others and think they kick ass. I've been told I should start a mix-making company.
8. Every mix I make is custom-tailored for its recipient. I've never copied someone's mix to give to a second person.
9. Despite the fact that Jewish law says one should be bar mitzvahed at 13, I had mine when I was 12. We moved my ceremony up a month and a half because we were afraid that if we waited until late December when I actually turned 13, there would be snow and people wouldn't be able to make it. Plus it would be too close to Christmas and some of my non-Jewish friends wouldn't have been able to come.
10. A professor once thought I was cheating on a left-brain/right-brain dominance test because I kept scoring so close to dead even -- even hit dead even on the third test I took. I finally convinced her I wasn't cheating by taking a fourth test in front of her and going with her to get the results.
11. Both of my index fingers are curved. Noticeably.
12. My typing averages around 80 words per minute.
13. When I get tired, my brain shuts down. It's not that I'm giving in to the fatigue, I just literally can't focus or think and I have to sleep.
14. I always keep things at my desk like rubber stress balls both to keep me sane but also to run my own small psychological experiments to see how many people will mindlessly pick something up and start playing with it when they come to talk to me.
15. At my last job, I used to order candy from Kozmo and put it in a big bowl on my desk in order to get people in the office to come talk to me because for the first three months of my tenure there, I was stuck at a desk in the back of the company library due to space constraints.
16. I own a rocking chair that's older than I am. My mom bought it when she was pregnant with me and finished it herself.
17. I pick up accents easily. When I was a freshman in college, I picked up my roommate's Long Island accent within a few months. It was so bad when I went home for winter break, the radio station I worked at refused to let me back on the air until I lost the accent. I spoke out loud for an entire day in order to retrain myself and get rid of it.
18. At present, my accent sounds like a mix of Southern Californian and Canadian. I've had numerous people ask me in the past few months if I'm from either place. If I concentrate (like when I use my "radio voice"), I can speak completely without an accent.
19. I consider Howard Stern to be the Antichrist of Radio. Opie & Anthony are his demon minions.
20. I once met Christopher Reeve at an alpine slide in Massachusetts. This was many many years ago when he could still walk.
21. Despite my tendency to procrastinate, I always get things done by their due date/time. I've never had to ask for an extension on a project or assignment.
22. I was once fired from a Subway franchise. The boss was looking for a way to get her family to work there, so she told me people were complaining about me and let me go.
23. I played the trombone for 9 years. I stopped when I got to college and started singing instead.
24. I can't draw to save my life. I've tried. I can do geometric shapes pretty well, but nothing artistic whatsoever.
25. I'm quite infatuated with Nikka Costa.
26. I don't think I can smell or taste garlic that well, though I put it in a lot of things I cook.
27. One of the easiest and most delicious dishes I can make just involves mixing crumbled feta cheese, cooked ground meat and rotini pasta in a pot with a dash of olive oil. Soooooo good, so easy to make.
28. My chocolate and peanut butter squares are always well-received. Friends have specifically requested that I bring them to parties.
29. Although I love to dance, I've always felt more comfortable behind the turntables than in front of them. But I'll still go dancing with friends.
30. When I go dancing with female friends, I'm usually the one who they ask to act as a crotchblocker for other guys when they don't want to be hit on. Another benefit of being the Platonic Male Friend.
31. I can't stand candlepin bowling. I much prefer regular 10-pin, even though I'm really out of practice.
32. I kick ass at mini-golf. I love playing mini-golf.
33. I can beat box really well. Those of us in the a cappella world call it "vocal percussion." I was taught by a guy who's won awards for it.
34. My first self-bought record was Prince's Purple Rain soundtrack.
35. I aspire to be a mix of Lewis Black, Denis Leary and Jon Stewart.
36. I sometimes refer to myself in the third person. But not often.
37. I think British or Australian accents are great. It's an instant attraction for me if a woman has one.
38. I still have the license plate of the first car I ever drove.
39. I love calamari. My dad used to use it as a test to see whether he'd continue dating someone -- if she was open-minded enough to try it, she got the second date.
40. My parents met via a computer dating service. In 1970. I shudder to think what kind of computers they had then.
41. In a performance evaluation at one of my previous jobs, I received the conflicting comments "excellent team player" and "does not play well with others" from the same person.
42. I've got kind of a lead foot when driving on highways.
43. My hair is jet black. Any attempts at coloration have led to failure. I'd need to bleach my hair out first, and I just don't want to do that.
44. I have to see the end of any movie I start watching or finish any book I start reading, no matter how bad it is. It's not a matter of some form of obsessive-compulsive behavior to finish things, I just have to find out what happens at the end.
45. My longest relationship lasted 22 months.
46. I took ancient pot handles from a dig in Israel. They're probably a thousand or so years old. I still have them.
47. I also have a piece of the red carpet from the Cannes Film Festival as well as a rock from Pompeii.
48. I have a Curious George stuffed animal that I've had since I was 1 year old. He's old enough to drink.
49. I usually need some kind of background noise on when I'm by myself -- either the TV or some music.
50. I know all the lyrics to R.E.M.'s "It's the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)." I had to learn them because it was my first solo with my college a cappella group.
51. I've never cried at a funeral. I've wanted to, but somehow the tears just never came.
52. I can drive stickshift.
53. I learned to drive stick because I was the only underage employee at the radio station and they wanted someone to be the designated driver to take the station vehicles back and drive their drunk asses home after they got wasted at remote broadcasts.
54. My college GPA was rather destroyed after I got a D- in a computer science class. After that, I decided maybe it wasn't such a good idea to be a computer science major.
55. I've been up in a hot air balloon.
56. I've also been skydiving.
57. When I was a sophomore in college, I had all four of my wisdom teeth taken out. Having holes in my jaws was one of the strangest feelings I've ever had. It was even stranger when I got food caught in them, and you should've seen the faces I was making to try to make my jaw muscles force the food out.
58. I've unlearned how to sit Indian-style. Whenever I sit with my legs folded, I do some strange kind of yoga position thing where I put one leg on top of the other but they're not intertwined. It's hard to describe, it's like how swamis sit when they chant "ommmm."
59. When I was 10, I was big into astronomy. It was mostly due to the fact that Halley's Comet was returning. It was an intense but short-lived period in my life. But I still remember a lot of it and can identify a bunch of constellations and planets.
60. I've never dated someone the same age as me. All the women I've dated have either been a few years older or a few years younger than me.
61. I once dated a woman nine years older than me.
62. I fidget.
63. I can't stand up for long periods of time without moving around. I need to either sit or walk. I can't just stand in line or something without moving or shifting around a lot.
64. I take my watch off when I'm using the computer. I don't know why I started doing it, but it became a habit to type watch-less.
65. I've lived through two hurricanes.
66. I've never experienced a tornado. Thankfully.
67. Even though I played in my high school's jazz band for a few years, I never really got into jazz that much.
68. I've seen Back to the Future more than any other film. I could probably quote you the entire script. I don't know what they're waiting for to release it on DVD, but my tape's worn out.
69. I firmly believe that the world will one day be run by either Disney, Microsoft, Clear Channel, McDonald's, Wal-Mart, Ted Turner or a conglomeration of them. This entry was brought to you by the people at Microsoft, so if you're using Netscape or Opera or iCab to read this, your monitor will now blow up and your computer will crash.
70. I was one of a small amount of people who noticed that near the end of Soul Coughing's song "The Bug," you can hear the lead singer softly saying "George Clooney is Satan" over and over.
71. I once piled friends in my car and drove two hours each way to a restaurant simply because I had a craving for their burritos and I knew it was half-price Mexican night there.
72. I took six years of French. I could speak it fairly well. But I'm rusty now.
73. I want to learn Spanish. And now that I'm going to be living in Los Angeles, I probably should learn it as a matter of need.
74. The three words I hate saying the most are "I don't know."
75. I need to read the paper every morning, otherwise I feel disconnected from the world.
76. I can read backwards, upside-down, and upside-down and backwards.
77. I've been accused of having handwriting that's sometimes too small to be legible. Unfortunately, writing bigger makes my hand and wrist hurt.
78. I write pretty neatly, except when I'm in a big hurry.
79. My writing implement of choice is a Sanford Uniball Micro 0.2mm black ink pen.
80. I prefer typing to writing. Probably because I type faster than I write and I also self-edit as I write, and it's easier and neater to do that on a computer.
81. I've owned the same pair of Timberland hiking boots for 7 years. These things are indestructible. They should figure out a way to build cars out of these things, they'd never break down.
82. I've never fired a gun. I'm curious to know what it feels like.
83. I don't heal well, for some odd reason. It takes a while for my scabs to heal and I usually scar slightly instead of healing seamlessly.
84. If I don't like someone, I just won't acknowledge their presence and I'll try very hard to ignore them.
85. I've gotten two speeding tickets. One was in Ohio, where I was clocked at 90 but paced at 84 in a 65 zone, the other was a few days later in Wyoming, where I was clocked at 84 in a 75 zone. The Wyoming ticket was almost $50 more than the Ohio ticket, even though I was only going 9 miles over the speed limit there.
86. Because my dad is a doctor and worked very strange hours when I was younger, I had to be quiet around the house because whenever he was home, he was probably sleeping. I wasn't allowed to have friends over too often, so I learned to entertain myself and I've also learned how to move around extremely quietly.
87. I look my best when I'm wearing black or blue. One of my favorite outfits is a black long-sleeved shirt with blue jeans. Even though I look like a giant bruise, it goes best with my coloring.
88. When I was younger, I was a big Beach Boys fan.
89. I prefer dark chocolate to milk chocolate, and I hate white chocolate.
90. I do really good Kermit the Frog, Fat Albert, Yoda and Chewbacca voice imitations.
91. I lost my college diploma for the better part of 3 1/2 years. I just found it two weeks ago.
92. The longest I've ever been awake in one stretch is 27 hours.
93. I don't drink coffee or tea. I just never acquired the taste. Maybe that's why I'm not a morning person.
94. I have a great sense of direction. It's almost impossible for me to get lost. I've tried driving without looking at a map and just making random turns down unfamiliar streets, but I always unintentionally end up somewhere that I'm familiar with.
95. I prefer stiff mattresses to soft ones. I like having support in my bed. I can't sleep in waterbeds.
96. I've never gotten seasick. I can also read in cars and buses without getting motion sickness.
97. A good portion of my nightmares involve acting out scenes from movies I've seen but replacing the actors with people I know from my life.
98. My eyes have become kind of light-sensitive. I usually like to wear sunglasses when I'm outside during the day.
99. I don't like getting wet unless it's intentional. Like if I'm in the shower or I planned on going swimming so I'm wearing a bathing suit, that's okay. But I hate getting caught in the rain unprepared or being thrown into a pool with my clothes on.
100. It's all about the music. Just keep the beat, sing like you mean it and you'll do fine. It's gotten me this far.

Among some of the loonier things I saw today:
While waiting in line at the bank to do some account work before I leave, the man in front of me began having a conversation with thin air. He did not have a cell phone. He wasn't looking in the direction of anyone in particular. He just said, "Hi" and "how are you?" and "oh, that's nice" and began discussing the nice weather with his invisible imaginary friend.

Needless to say, it was a bit disconcerting. I was just hoping he didn't turn to me and ask me why I was being so rude and not answering his invisible imaginary friend's question.

Today, the Boston Blog 'n' Bowl is taking place without me. Sorry to all the folks who cajoled, begged and threatened me to try to come, but circumstances just couldn't allow it. Besides, I'm no longer a resident of Boston.

Strangely enough, the last time I was up there (when I met up with my friends to go to Montreal), I found myself thinking that the city wasn't as bad as I had thought it was when I lived there. I had concentrated so much on getting out of Boston that once I finally had, I thought maybe it wasn't so horrible. Or was I just being naïve because I was leaving?

I've officially eaten almost everything there is to eat in this house. Mom will probably be a little pissed when she goes to have those pizza leftovers and finds that I ate half of them at around midnight last night. I'm sure my departure will lower their grocery bills drastically.

With the help of an old friend, I hauled two boxes full of my worldly possessions down to the local UPS office to ship out to California. The move has officially begun. We celebrated with ten tons of pizza. I'm currently deep in the throes of food coma, yet I still have a ton of stuff to pack up so I can ship it out tomorrow morning. Then I get my haircut tomorrow afternoon, pack up the car & get ready to leave on Sunday.

I'm sorry that this is consuming most of the content in my blog right now, but there's little else that I can think about. Within the space of a week, my life has been so completely and utterly turned upside down -- in a good way, of course.

I think I need to beat my computer a few more times at Monopoly before I have the wherewithall to continue packing.

There is indeed such a thing as divine retribution.

Let's start the tale by saying that I was not the most popular person in high school. While I did have a good number of friends and was well-known, there were a few who thought it might be fun to occasionally torment me. Not having the sense of self that I developed in college, I wasn't exactly the forthright and self-assured person that I am today. Either way, I contented myself with knowing that the clichés of "someday they'll get theirs" and "we'll see what happens at the reunion" might actually hold some water. I was satisfied when I finally landed the Dream Job because it meant that I'd be doing what I wanted and on my terms, so they couldn't touch me anymore. But it gets better.

A scan of today's local paper reveals that one of the people who gave me a particularly hard time in high school was arrested and pled guilty to federal drug charges. His drug-selling operation may have netted him $175,000 in cars & cash, but he has to turn it all over to the DEA & the rest of the government in the settlement and he'll also probably have to serve some jail time. Suffice to say there's a decent chance he won't be showing up at our reunion in 2004 at all because the Department of Corrections may not let him out in time, but I'll hopefully be able to get the time off from a job I've wanted for years to fly in from California.

It may be freezing cold outside right now, but the sun is shining a little more brightly and within a week or two, I'll be in permanent summer weather. Who knew good things could happen before 9AM?

No, I'm actually awake at 8AM. Yes, I've actually been up for long enough that I could form a coherent thought that this godforsaken hour of the morning.

It's Packing Day. My stress level shot through the roof about a half-hour before I even opened my eyes. Do you think it would seriously impact my packing abilities if I did a few shots of Cuervo before I started putting stuff in bubblewrap, or is it still too early for that?

I realized that I had another example of the great stupidity of man but had failed to share it. This morning, while hauling ass down the LIE (Long Island Expressway for the uninitiated), I was passed by some guy doing 80 in a rented Ryder truck. I wouldn't have thought twice about it usually, but we'd just passed a rather large sign that said "trucks prohibited from the left lane" followed by another sign declaring that anyone doing over the speed limit of 55 would be summarily thrown in chains and forced to make Chicken McNugget paste for a minimum of three years. Well, no, but the speed limit was 55. Either way, I probably wouldn't have thought twice about it had I not seen the two signs and then spotted a Suffolk County police cruiser quickly approaching in my rearview mirror. The cop car pulled up behind the Ryder and put on his lights. The Ryder apparently didn't notice, as he kept on truckin' along at 80 in the left lane. The cop dropped back a bit -- possibly thinking that he was in the Ryder's blind spot so he needed to rectify the situation -- and also began drifting into the left hand shoulder to attract the driver's attention. No dice. Ryderman is completely oblivious. Meanwhile, all the other cars have backed off the area because they want nothing to do with it.

The cop pulls out alongside the Ryder, lights still going, then pulls back behind the Ryder -- I guess in an attempt to get the driver's attention again and say, "hey look pal, I'm trying to pull you over." Ryderman still does not notice. At this point, the cop has had his lights on for about 2 minutes and I'm laughing my ass off at the scene unfolding in front of me. Finally, the cop car pulls out next to the Ryder truck, speeds up to get a little bit in front of him and waves him over, and the saga ends about 3 or 4 minutes after the initial lights-activation as the Ryder and the cop both pull into the grass median.

Man, am I glad that I'm not renting a truck to haul my stuff to California.

Never forget those who died in vain so that we could live in freedom. Such was the inscription that I left (and then signed my name) on the World Trade Center viewing platform, adding mine to the thousands already there. It's really hard for me to describe it, especially since they've done an extensive amount of cleaning to the point where the debris is almost all gone. But the one thing that struck me the most was the lack of something being there. It's in the middle of the financial district, surrounded by all these tall buildings... and there's this hole. This spot where you know two huge-ass buildings used to be, yet now looks like the site where they've cleared out land in order to build a new Wendy's or something. It's just... empty. Mom and I got up gawdawfully early to catch the ferry to Long Island, then I drove to the cemetery where we saw our relatives. I was glad that I had gone with her because she started to break down a little when she talked about her parents. After we cleaned up, we partook of our family's claim to fame: our cemetery plot is next to that of Julius & Ethel Rosenberg, the famous spies who were executed in the 1950s for selling secrets to the Russians, so we walked over to say hi. Then into the city, where we also took a detour into Queens to see the house she grew up in.

The wait on the WTC tickets was negligible, so we were able to have lunch and get out of the city fairly quickly to beat most of rush hour. It's a little odd to think that even though my mom is a New Yorker, born and raised, she's been out of the city longer than she was a resident of it. Things have changed a fair amount since she really spent time there as I had to explain to her how to use the new MetroCard system they've got now for the subways.

Personally, I'm exhausted and my work has barely begun. I have to start packing tonight and need to finish tomorrow so I can ship off all my stuff before I leave on Sunday. It doesn't seem real.

This time, I've been paired with the gorgeous, sexy, smart and intriguing ericalynn. Not only do we have a lot of interests in common, it seems that she grew up with people I went to college with -- one of whom lived across the hall from me during my freshman year. Shall we? We shall.

1. what is the first thing you do when you get up in the morning?
Well, oddly enough, at my old apartment, the first thing I did after getting out of bed was turn on my computer. When I move into my own place again, I will probably end up restarting that ritual. (Does that say how badly addicted I am to the Internet?) On any given weekday morning, I have the usual breakfast-and-morning-paper thing. I'm not a morning person and it takes me a while to wake up -- my former roommate once described the process of me stumbling out of bed and attempting to wake up as a full workout in and of itself due to the effort I have to put into achieving consciousness. On a weekend, I might just stay in bed for a little while and see what's on TV first before I crawl out into the world. 2. if you could only eat three meals for the rest of your life, what three would you choose? (going out to a restaurant is ok, you don't have to cook these meals yourself. so 'pizza at joe's' would suffice.)
Cheeseburger & fries, a gorgonzola pizza from a local pizza place here in the town I grew up in, and probably some form of breakfast food -- I've developed a recent addiction to Smacks cereal, so maybe that. I'm also a sucker for a good rack of baby back ribs (and if anyone starts singing that Chili's song, they're gonna get a good whackin' from me) as well as good sushi or Mexican food or Chinese food -- I'm Jewish, and as the line goes: "Jews know two things: suffering and where to find great Chinese food." I like variety in what I eat, I can't decide on just three things.

3. how old were you when you first learned to read?
Mom says either 2 or 3. I was apparently pretty smart when I was younger (though I don't know what happened to it), I started kindergarten at 4 as the youngest kid in class, yet I could already read, write and count to 100.

4. you have just been reincarnated. what have you come back as?
Hugh Hefner.

5. where in the world would you like to travel to the most that you haven't been to yet?
Italy and Australia. I'd love to take a month for each country, especially Italy. Though I once read a Car and Driver article where they road-tested a new Corvette by driving it through the Outback and all around the coastline in Australia, that sounded like the coolest trip ever -- no, not just because of the fact that it was a 'Vette.

6. what was your most embarrassing moment (whole life included, not just school years)?
That's a subjective question. What's embarrassing now looking back on it as a twentysomething may not have been embarrassing at the time. I suppose that my rather outrageous behavior trying to get some girl that I had a crush on in junior high school to like me is very high on that list even though it's a series of events and not one single thing -- I do remember cutting in on most of her dance partners during a dance though, what do you want from me? I was young. Other moment is possibly when I was in high school and was laughing so hard at what the teacher was saying that I let out a loud fart.

7. have you ever cheated on someone? why? (two parter, but hey, i'm cool, i get to ask two parters!)
No. I would be pretty destroyed if someone I really liked and was dating cheated on me, so I try to adhere to the Golden Rule when dating. If I got to the point where I was obsessed with cheating because I was so unhappy in the relationship, it's time to end the relationship.

8. have you ever been in a serious car accident?
Serious? No. I once hit a guy on a bicycle -- he cut me off and I couldn't stop in time, so my front bumper clipped his back tire and he went flying over his handlebars just before I ran over his bike's rear wheel. He had some cuts and scrapes but was otherwise okay and the only damage to my car was that I blew a signal light and had to replace a $5 lamp. Of all my fenderbenders (and I've only had 2 or 3), that was the most rattling and it took me a little while to get my confidence back while behind the wheel. But all the eyewitnesses swore up and down six ways from Sunday that it was completely his fault.

9. isshehotornot?: britney spears
I'll say hot, though I'm still trying to decide if her breasts are fake or real. They keep changing size.

10. who do you consider to be your greatest inspiration (does not have to be living, of course.)
I'm not really sure. Anyone who really wanted something and went after it to get it. My dad, for one. He decided he really wanted to be a doctor, so he & my mom left their well-paying jobs & everyone they knew to live in Mexico for 4 years so he could go to med school. I think I basically view everyone else as an inspiration, because I look at people and say to myself either "man, I respect him/her and want to be like him/her" or "man, I really have no respect for him/her and need to motivate myself so I don't end up like him/her."

And there you have it.

Naps definitely are the equalizer of the masses. Most of us can and do nap on a regular basis (although for some reason, my mother cannot nap despite numerous attempts at it). My problem is that when I wake up from a nap, I usually feel pretty groggy and the after-effect is that everything I've done before the nap began feels like a dream. Despite physical evidence to the contrary, my early-afternoon nap makes me feel like I didn't wake my sorry ass up at 7AM to go to the Connecticut DMV to hand my car over to my parents and pick up packing supplies. Tomorrow will be even worse when I wake up at 5:30AM to catch a ferry. But more on that later.

Today was my day to be stupid. Thankfully, I am suffering from a 24 hour bout of stupidity rather than a chronic or terminal case. Not only did I forget to unload my trunk last night so when I bought huge boxes of bubble wrap I could barely fit them in my car (and I initially thought I couldn't get them in because I had put them in sideways instead of the proper way to fit them all in the back seat), but I also accidentally left two very important papers at the house when I went to my appointment to have my taxes done. Thankfully, the accountant was a family friend so it was okay -- she chatted with my mom and worked on my taxes while I dashed back to the house at 80+ miles an hour to find the papers (they had fallen off my stack that I brought with me -- it wasn't intentional).

Tomorrow, I'm waking my sorry ass up at 5:30AM to catch a ferry to Long Island. Mom and I are going to the family cemetery plot on Long Island to say goodbye to our relatives for what could probably be both of our last times there until one of my parents kicks off. We're also heading into New York City proper to pay our respects to our other honored dead at Ground Zero. This will be the last time that I see New York for a very long time, and it will be one of the last times my mom ever sees New York. Though I was born there, it will be harder on her because she was raised there and spent 25 years in the city.

I'm leaving Sunday. Sunday, I hop in the car and begin the weeklong drive to Los Angeles. Which means that I have ten tons of things to accomplish between now & then.

Which makes my television time all that much more precious. If I'm going to choose TV as vegetation fodder, I'd like to see commercials for things other than stupid-ass movies like Super Troopers. Who in God's name greenlighted this project? I get the feeling that it will be used in the future as a psychological warfare tool against cults or whoever, like when the U.S. government blasted Nancy Sinatra records at the Branch Davidian compound when they were holing up in Waco, Texas. Just put up a giant drive-in movie screen next to the building, start showing Super Troopers and whoever's inside will come running out screaming and clutching their heads to try to prevent their brains from committing hari-kari.

Oh, the humanity...

Dad was right, I didn't sleep much last night. The impact of last night's message is setting in, and the flurry of activity it generated is coming to fruition. Things have kicked into high gear in the household and for some insane reason, I feel like taking five minutes by myself and just banging my head against the wall. I don't know why. Maybe it's to try to wake myself up to make sure this isn't a dream, maybe it's to bring some reality to this sudden dose of insanity as pleasurable as the end result of said insanity will be.

For once, I actually am having problems putting my feelings into words. While this is something that I absolutely want to do and have no reservations about moving to Los Angeles for this job whatsoever, I'm just a little apprehensive of what the future has to hold. I'm leaving behind everything familiar to me and basically saying goodbye to the life I led for the past 25 years. But as Bill said a while back in one of my comment sections, your soul can subsist on bread & butter but sometimes you just need that chocolate cake. I'll gladly take the trade-off of this anxiety and the extra work of starting over for the payoff of doing something I love and being happy over the safety of staying in New England and doing something with my life that I wasn't ecstatic about.

And now, I can finally quote the song for the third time here, and have it truly mean literally what the lyrics say without posing it as a question or using them ironically:

I get the feeling it's a new day
Sun is rising
I get the feeling everything is gonna change.
-- Grand Theft Audio, "As Good As It Gets"

From Los Angeles came additional word this afternoon: Ladies and gentlemen, the Dream Job is landed. The particulars of when I start still need to be worked out, but I'm heading out to L.A. to do something I have a burning desire to do and you have no idea how ecstatic I am. For the first time in my life, I'm doing something that I want to do on my own terms and not something that I just drifted into.

My dad said I'm not going to be able to get to sleep tonight. He's probably right.

WOOOOOOOOOOO HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

From Los Angeles came the word in the mail this afternoon: I scored an "outstanding" rating on my interview with the city that I took less than two weeks ago. Surprising considering that my interview was less than 15 minutes long and I was sick during it, and even more so because they said I would be receiving word between 3-5 weeks and it's only been a little under 2. In a pool of over 100 people, I placed 8th. While that may not guarantee me a job with them by any stretch of the imagination, I have qualified for one with distinction.

Thus another step in my journey towards the West Coast is taken. I can almost see the shores of the Pacific, which probably look considerably more hospitable than today's cold rain/sleet mix here in East Middle-of-Nowhere, Connecticut.