It meant a lot to Joan that I drove to Los Angeles this weekend and made it to her party. I'm glad, because doing so really fucked up my work, my schedule and my life. This week is going to be the week from hell as a result, I'm not kidding.

On Wednesday, I have to clean the house and get Tim from the airport. On Thursday, we have a Thanksgiving party to go to. That's all okay, but Friday is my first day as a Minion. On Friday, I have to work at five. In the morning. Who ever heard of such a thing? And then when I get home, at noonish, I have to take Tim out and show him a good time. On Saturday, I have to do it all over again. Work at five in the morning. Take Tim out during the day. Heavenly god.

On Sunday, Tim is going home. This means getting up early and driving him to the airport, but the rest of the day is mine, all mine. I'll finally be able to sleep, and I bet I'll be exhausted. But I also have to do some major homework for next Monday's class. I was going to work on it some tonight but, fuck it. I'll do it Sunday.

I hope this visit with Tim is worth it.

Actually, it's already worth it. The fact that he even wants to come and see me makes it worth it. Not one of my other friends, despite their promises, has been up here. It's kind of sad, really. My Los Angeles friends are disappointing me on many levels.

And speaking of sad, Joan's party was kind of sad. And by sad, I mean "pathetic".

I left San Francisco in the morning, drove like hell and made it to the Valley in five hours flat. I even got there early, and ended up driving around for a while, running errands. I drove right by Tim's house, and called him to ask where Target was. I said, "I'd stop by for a while, but it would make our upcoming visit rather anticlimactic."

I was the first one at the restaurant, and Joan freaked out with happiness. I mean, she was extremely excited that I had driven down. It made the whole thing worth it. The service was bad, the people were boring, most of the games didn't get played, and the vast majority of the guests left early, even before the cake was cut. How rude.

I was sad that Charlotte, Bruno, Danielle and Fernando left before I did. You'd think, since they won't see me until January at the very least, that they might want to stay and talk to me. You know, have a cup of coffee and talk the night away. They seemed happy enough to see me, but they didn't stay. And the more I think about it, the more disappointed I am about that. Feh.

The party was in a back room at El Torito in Granada Hills. She and three of her high school friends are all turning forty. The thing with Joan is that she does not look or act forty; not by any stretch of the imagination. There's a reason her friends are all fifteen years younger than she is.

But her fellow birthday girls. Now their friends are forty if they are a day. So it was a bunch of stodgy old people, and a small cluster of Joan's young friends. By small, I mean Charlotte and Bruno, Danielle and Fernando, and myself. And there was one interesting guy, who sat himself right down next to Joan's elderly mother. He is this big, scary, tattooed, pierced Goth guy who calls himself Rat Bastard. Talk about incongruous.

He was a fun guy to talk to. A lot of people recognized him from an E! special he was on. Something about Goth clubs? Whatever the case may be, he explained that Rat Bastard is his "scene" persona. His real name is something far more prosaic, and he seemed like nothing more than a large, tattooed teddy bear.

Some guy, a short, bald old guy, walked up to Rat Bastard and said, "Can I have your autograph? Maggie says you're going places." As Rat signed a napkin, I said to the guy, "Don't you want my autograph? I'm going places too."

"Really??" he said eagerly. "Where are you going?"

"Back to San Francisco, for one thing."

(I didn't really say that last bit, but I should have.)

After the party, I went to meet my sister and my cousin at Jerry's Deli. Now that was a good time. They actually seemed happy to see me, and desirous of spending as much time with me as possible. Considering that we're all going to Europe together in a month, it makes the rest of my friends look all the worse by comparison.

My sister and cousin (who both work on Angel) got me an autographed picture. "To Monique, David Boreanaz." I hung it up over my TV. My sister also photocopied some particularly amusing pieces of fan mail. I absolutely must share.

The first one is addressed "Dear the 'Angel' Cast" and starts out, "I have been a big fan of this hourly drama, 'Gilmore Girls' since it airs on television. The show stars with celebrities Charisma Carpenter, David Boreanaz, etc." The letter goes on to give a summary of Angel, as if the production office doesn't know that the show is about a vampire, and needs fans to explain the premise to them. Fans who think the show is named "Gilmore Girls" no less!

The second letter is addressed "To ANGEL". The writer is a bit fond of capitalization. Some quotes include,

"Are you relly [sic] going out with BUFFY because if you are your LUCKY"

"Do you like SLIM SHADY because if you do Ive got his songs?"

"Your very ."

"Do you like wwf my best one is KANE?"

The writer encloses a trading card of WWF wrestler Kane, giving the camera a big thumbs up. And if you think that is weird, the third one is way weirder. This is the entirety of the letter:

MADONNA NOT HAVING CHILD-FRAUD KIDNAPS CONTACT NEW MEXICO F.B.I. P.S. ALIENS-BRAZIL IMMIGRATION.

Man, I need to work at that production office. I bet that's just the tip of the funny letter iceberg. I wish my readers would send me stuff like that.

Dear MONIQUE,

I am a big fan of the journal "FRESH HELL" that you write? Do you like KEVIN COSTNER because I am named Kevin. AL GORE MURDERS ABDUCTION ANAL PROBE P.S. MIDNIGHT-SRI LANKA. Please send autographed picture. That would be very .

Too bad I don't have a scanner. I wish I could scan these letters. And also, I took a surreptitious picture of Mickey the other night. It's not that great, but you could at least see what he looks like (hint: he's fucking hot). I have a whole bunch of pictures to scan. I took some pictures of my room, my classmates, and there's a funny Cassie picture where she looks like she's contemplating suicide.

Maybe once I've had my job for awhile, I can buy a scanner. They're probably fairly inexpensive these days.

I actually want a laptop more, so I can do some writing when I'm in Holland, but I haven't been very successful in finding a cheap one. My sister just bought a new computer (a Mac, but it's really cool) and maybe she still has her old laptop. I can live with a Mac for three weeks, and gladly. I should call her tomorrow.

I've been working on my eating habits, and I have to say, I've been doing v. well. My fatal flaw has been snacking at night. I always eat at around 7:00, and by the time it's midnight, I am hungry again.

So, I bought myself an air popcorn popper. It's not quite as good as the popcorn Matt used to make me, but 'twill serve. And if I absolutely must eat in the middle of the night, air popped popcorn is a good choice.

The only problem is that the popcorn popper sucks up electricity like there's no tomorrow. The first time I used it, I plugged it into a surge protector that has my lamp, my alarm clock, and my space heater plugged into it. Within thirty seconds, the lamp, alarm clock, space heater and popcorn popper had all shut off.

I thought it was a fluke, because the electricity came back on moments later, and the rest of my popcorn was made without incident. Then tonight, when I tried to make popcorn, I plugged it into my other surge protector: TV, computer, answering machine. Ten seconds passed. The electricity went out.

In the whole house.

Jane came downstairs, to fix the fuse box. Leah and The Kid appeared at the top of the stairs. The Kid called down, "Hi Monique! Ema turned off Barney." Leah (he calls her Ema; I believe it's a Jewish nickname) kept trying to explain that she didn't turn off Barney, but he would have none of it. "Mommy went to fix it, because Ema turned off Barney."

Sheepishly, I had to admit that my possessed popcorn popper was the culprit who turned off Barney. Once the lights were back on, I turned off my electronics and popped a huge bowl of fluffy white corn without incident.

Possessed popcorn is, for the record, quite yummy.

Today the editors of the magazine collated our opinions on the submitted pieces. We divided the submissions, preliminarily, into three tiers. The first tier: poems we all agreed that we liked. The second tier: all of us but one liked them. The third tier: three of the five of us liked them.

There were over 300 submissions. Only nine poems made it into the first tier. Three of them were mine.

The whole process was wonderful for my ego, because my poems received, by far, the most positive reception and highest marks from my fellow staff members. Either they're scared of me and are pretending to love my work, or they genuinely love my work. Each possibility is appealing in its own way.

Oh, and one of the first tier poems was "The Taco Bell Manifesto." Looks like I'll be reading it again, at the publication party in the Spring. Go me! Yay me!

A final amusing anecdote. Last week, in my Romantics class, we were reading papers we had written. One girl read hers, which was a story about taking the bus to class.

"In a few weeks, I will graduate and get my degree. I've spent an obscene amount of money, which I choose not to make myself aware of... just to read Foucault on the bus." There was a pause. "It only cost me a dollar to read on the subway in New York."

The whole class erupted into applause and laughter. Every single one of us recognized ourselves in that quote. Heaven help us.

"Stats dropped, subscribers lost, oh well. Top notch writing not always possible or desirable. Still love readers. Readers still love me. Yes?"