I had Grape Nuts, my favorite cereal. (And it's good for you, too.) My grandmother used to eat it all the time-- I'd spend the night at her house and in the morning, we'd have Grape Nuts together. I still eat it the way she used to make it-- with fresh raisins (none of those nasty dry ones that come in the "Grape Nuts with raisins" box) and milk. Mmm.

Not that you needed that little stroll down memory lane, but still.

Hey, Top Gun is on. That's cool. It's been a long while since I've seen it.

I am remembering how cool some of these scenes are. When Charlie turns out to be the flight instructor. When Goose sings "Great Balls of Fire." When Mav throws the dog tags into the sea. The shirtless volleyball game. The homoerotic subtext.

"Hey Goose, you big stud. Take me to bed or lose me forever." "Show me the way home, honey." "I'll slam on the brakes and he'll fly right by." "He is 100% prime time in love with you." "I feel the need, the need, for speed."

Great movie.

Oh, Maverick just turned up in those white Hanes underwear. Nothing is more deadly to my sexual desire than white Hanes underwear. Why? Because my father wears them. He wanders around the house in them. And I think he's had the same ten pairs of underwear for thirty years. They've been washed so many times that they're practically see-through, and the elastic sags.

I'll let you fill in the blanks, there.

So if a guy wears that underwear? It's like dumping a bucket of cold water on me and showing me naked pictures of my father.

This might be important information for you to have someday, fellas. You better write it down.

I hate the word "fashionista." And in the new Entertainment Weekly style section (which is rather stupid, but I can't escape the habit of reading every word in that damn magazine, so there you go) they use that word every single fucking week.

I also hate the word "redux," which I think is way pretentious. Just so you know.

I have a $240 credit card bill, and it's almost all for gasoline purchases. It covers two trips back and forth to Los Angeles, but still. That's a lot of money! I hate not being able to pay off my credit card bill in one shot.

Actually, I just got paid, so I could probably pull it off. But then when more bills come in, I'll have no way to pay them. And I'll be living out of my piggy bank, literally, for the next two weeks.

Maybe I should start a porn site.

I was talking with one of my co-workers about my plan to apply for the Fulbright again this year. Have I mentioned it yet? I am going to try and apply again. This time, with a project that my heart is invested in. I think that's what got me turned down the last time.

I knew I wanted to do something with Dutch poetry, but I wasn't sure exactly what I wanted to do. There's an idea which appeals to me, which is translating the works of a certain Dutch poet or genre of Dutch poetry. And then there's an idea that is, according to Probst, less "marketable" as it were: writing my own stuff and translating it into Dutch. But the more I think about it, I realize that the latter idea is the one I feel excited and passionate about.

My co-worker was asking me some questions about it, and I sort of sketched an outline of a study plan. For the first half of the time in Holland, I would be writing my own poetry (heavily influenced by my experiences in the Netherlands), and taking immersion classes in the Dutch language. (I already have a moderate fluency, but it's all informal. Which means that I'll probably pick it up quickly, but I definitely need to study it.) The second half of my time will be spent translating my own writing into Dutch.

I feel pretty good about this project idea. (Feel free to write and agree with me; I could use the encouragement.) I think it will be enriching and interesting, and accomplish precisely what I want to accomplish: live overseas for a year, and become proficient in the Language of my People.

Now I have to start working on my application. I can only hope that some of the professors in the Dutch Studies department at UC Berkeley will be willing to help me. None of the professors at my school are qualified to evaluate my Dutch language skills.

But on the plus side, the West Coast Fulbright office is in San Francisco. Perhaps when I'm in the city on Monday, I'll have time to stop by. I have no idea if it will help, but it can't hurt.

I had a fun day at work today. Only cool people were working-- not, for instance, our new assistant manager, who puts the "ass" in "assistant manager."

So it was a low key day. But before I came in, it was another story. Apparently a woman thought she had been overcharged for a couple of frappuccinos, and she started yelling at the barista. The shift supervisor (who does not suffer customers gladly) came out and started dealing with her, and then the customer actually began spitting at her. Spitting at her, over 70 cents! Can you imagine?

Well, the last time I dealt with an abusive customer, I told you that one of my partners placated him, right? Well this same partner (Martin) actually took the disputed 70 cents out of our tip jar, and gave it back to the customer. Everyone was really pissed off at him for doing this.

I know Martin considers it to be good customer service, but I think what he did was to encourage an extremely abusive person to go out and do the same thing to other retail personnel. I think there's a time to be conciliatory and a time to say, "We will not allow you to abuse us," and he made the wrong choice.

So the air was charged with tension when I got there-- because the rest of the partners were still pissed that he had done this. (He put the 70 cents back in our tip jar out of his own pocket, but the 70 cents really wasn't the point at all.) Once Martin left, and we had all had a good old fashioned bitchfest about it, the day became fun.

I made friends with one of my customers-- a guy who is getting his Ph.D. in music over at Berkeley. We bonded over our shared circumstances: both living like poor college students, pursuing artistic degrees, getting ready to teach undergraduates. We were talking about grad students in general not having any money, and he said, "Yeah, but at least you have your time and your mind."

Hell yeah.

Anyway, I spent a good half an hour just talking with this guy and his girlfriend. That's a cool day, when you can just stand around and shoot the shit with your customers, in lieu of doing any actual, you know. Work.

"ME
Come on, Tim. There's obviously a huge untapped parrot market out there. They're overlooking an entire demographic...

TIM
Oh, of course. How could we have overlooked something so obvious for so long? And think of the market for parrot smut! Polly want a porn site..."