I finally got paid for some proofreading work that I did ages ago, and it's been so long that I had both A) forgotten how many hours I'd worked, and B) resigned myself to the fact that the money might never appear in my world. But lo and behold, here it is. $500. I dance and sing! I rejoice.

Of course, I'm going to take this money and pay it to the nice people over at Discover, without whose generous support I would never have been able to get my car fixed. Hello, money! Goodbye, money.

Fortune is fleeting.

I saw The Exorcist for the first time this weekend. I've been terrified of this movie for years.

When I was a sophomore in high school, our teacher showed us a documentary of an actual exorcism. (This was Catholic school, of course, where we were forced to watch a graphic video of a late-term abortion, but weren't allowed to watch Glory in history class because it was rated R. Aah, the Catholics.)

Anyway, this exorcism video scared the bejeesus out of me, and I'm not kidding. It was right around that time (also the time of the abortion movie) that I really began to resent Catholicism and question this whole religion thing, but at the time I saw it, I believed in possession-- my teacher sure did. And the video was persuasive. For months after that, I would lie awake every night, praying Hail Mary after Hail Mary so that no demon would be able to come and possess me.

(Catholic school really fucks up your sense of perspective. Don't believe anyone who tells you different.)

My friend Charlotte was scared of this movie for years and years-- it was one of her biggest fears. (I think she saw it when she was seven, back when you're so young that movies have the power to traumatize--I have a movie like that, and it's Children of the Corn.) Her words came back to me in a rush as I was watching the movie. "It wasn't as bad as I remembered, but there are some parts you really, really won't like. There are icky things in the movie."

By "icky things" she didn't mean blood, pea soup, or heads turning backwards. She meant needles. And yeah, there are needles in this movie! For a while, every time I turned around, someone was holding a big old hypodermic! Nothing else in the movie scared me half as much as the needles-- at least not while I was watching it. Now, I keep remembering creepy stuff and getting the shivers, but it was more creepy than scary. Those big ass needles though-- they were scary. I was like, "Okay, describe what's going on..." and Rod was all, "Well, there's a needle..." and I'm like, "No, a bunny! A fluffy fluffy bunny!" And he's all, "Okay, uh, the doctor is taking out the bunny and... no, now there's an even bigger bunny, and... yeah, now there's blood spraying everywhere. Uh, from the bunny." Aaaah!

I guess everyone else in the world has seen this movie; I don't need to rehash it, but I will say that it's a good movie, and seriously scary. The subliminal stuff with the statues and the faces? Brrr. And when she's convulsing and yelling, "Mother! It burns!" before... well, before she's not herself anymore. Brrr, again.

I do like the phrase "sucks cocks in hell" though. I think I am going to begin slipping it into casual conversation. Like if I wanted to convey how much Men in Black II sucked, I could say, "This movie sucks cocks in hell." Or a customer might come up to me and ask, "How is your day?" and I could say, "My day sucks cocks in hell. How's yours?"

Yeah. Yeah, I think that has a nice ring to it.

I did a lot of other stuff this weekend, too. Like I said, Rod (best friend of Jen) was in town. We hung out with pete, we went drinking, we watched the Best Movie Ever. (Crossroads. Britney. Aww yeah.) We went pancakeing. We visited the camera obscura (near the Cliff House) which is indescribably cool. Looking back, it seems that we did a lot of musical numbers.

We formed a hypothetical band called the Naughty Amish. (Jen's idea for our first hit single: "Churn that butter, bitch!") We played the Game of Mo, which used to be universally acknowledged as the worst card game ever-- until Jen invented Multiplication is Fun, which is far, far worse. I wet my pants laughing, and I did it more than once.

In other words, a good time was had by all.

Permit me to get meta for a moment.

Many thanks to those of you who nominated and voted for me for the Diarist Award for Best Journal-- this is the second time I've won this award, and it almost means more to me to win it this time, because I figure, well, I've already won, so you had less incentive to vote for me! I'm happy you did. (Even if I didn't vote for myself.)

There's been some controversy about the awards lately, which I've been following with interest. But I like the awards; every quarter I discover a new journal or two because of them.

Anyway, I always have these moments when I think, why the hell would anyone want to read this journal? I just babble on and on about the minutia of my life. Navel-gazing with occasionally horrendous color schemes. I half expect to lose all my readers one day, when you all simultaneously decide I suck.

Well, I hope that doesn't happen. I will try to keep on doing what I've been doing-- as entertainingly as possible, and with only occasionally horrendous color schemes. And then maybe you'll keep reading, all you pairs of eyeballs out there! It means a lot to me that you're out there, it does-- the awards are icing. Thank you.

"But at the same time, if all the encouragement slowed down or stopped, would I move forward with the same amount of enthusiasm? Am I too governed by positive reinforcement? Do I need to care a little less? The balance between contentment and ambition. Between confidence and overconfidence. Between delusion and grandeur. It's tough."