I have no net access, yet I must post.

My birthday, for those who have been kind enough to ask, was not earthshattering, but I found it pleasant and filled with raw fish. I had the chance to eat Ebisu sushi not once, but twice! I also had the opportunity to spend the afternoon with my mother, who happens to be a minor deity walking this earth. I wrote a very long entry about how little damage my parents managed to inflict apon me growing up, but I only have a few minutes here and I have an awful lot of summary to do.

I have a small assortment of gifts, all lovely, including a necklace from J, a tiny black whip that looks as if it was made from a Koosh ball squashed flat, a couple of 8"x10" glossy prints of some pictures J and I took in Paris, and the new Terry Pratchett novel. My friends have all been exceptionally cosiderate and kind, especially considering that we're all running around like headless chickens in the days before Burning Man.

I'm going, you know, probably tomorrow, possibly as late as Friday. My plans are in a shambles already. We've finally moved the speakers and the playa-covered subs out of the living room, but we still have a GP Medium army tent, with an assortment of polls right next to my couch and three rolls of bright green astroturf leaning up against the bar. As usual, I don't know if I'm ready for this. Every year I approach Burning Man with a little less hope and a little more apprehension, but I can't bring myself to miss it. I'm on a speeding train heading for Black Rock City, because for two weeks out of the year I need to go to a place where no one is trying to sell me anything.

I'm packing my notebook.

Stay tuned.

I can't feel my arms.

Every time I'm foolish enough to think I know everything there is to know about fire dancing, somebody comes along and shows me that I am only at the beginning of a very long journey. In many ways, fire dancing is like martial arts. There are an infinite number of styles and approaches. If you watch a dancer for long enough, you can get a pretty good idea of who their teacher is. The different schools of fire dancing have their petty rivalries, their interpersonal feuds, and plain old differences of opinion. In any good martial arts flick, these differences would come to a climax in a fiery dance-off between two masters, spinning poi and fire staffs in the ultimate display of balance and agility, with flying kicks, handsprings, and behind-the-back turns. The dancers would yell "You killed my brother! You must pay!" or "Your double leg wrap is no match for my under-arm release spin!" Gallons and gallons of kerosene would be consumed.

Do you hear that sound? That is the sound of my readers (both of them) breathing an immense sigh of relief because I am not a filmmaker. Poi of Legend will not be hitting the theaters any time in the forseeable future.

Back to my arms, those useless noodles on either side of my body. I have unearthed a fire dancing master. I am a grasshopper again and I don't stand a chance of snatching the pebble from his hand. In the last few days I have tried out entirely new planes of movement, new techniques, new styles. Fire dancing is more than a series of moves strung together. It's not about who has the flashiest tricks or the most innovative equipment. In this sense, fire dancing becomes ballet. There are plenty of ballet moves that are technically difficult, but you dance a character, you dance to tell a story.

That is my newfound fire dancing Tao. No. That's not exactly true. I've had this revelation before, last year when I saw O. At the time, I thought that the answer was choreography, but now I am convinced that this can be achieved with a meticulous consideration for style. It's a difficult, picky, cerebral path I'm embarking on, but I've seen what's at the end.

It's beautiful.

Emily Dickenson. Yes, it was Emily Dickenson who said that hope is a thing with feathers. Well, if hope is a feathered creature, the world is a mob of angry monkeys throwing poo at anything that dares to fly through the air. Today , if I may be allowed to continue what I know is a lousy conceit, the monkeys must have been distracted, because hope landed on my shoulder. The world felt good and right and full of wonder.

It's the job thing, you see. I was awakened this morning (I've stopped sleeping until the middle of the afternoon. It was impossible to buy groceries) by a call from the astoundingly pleasant company where I interviewed on Friday, They wanted to know if I was still interested in the job because if I was, they were preparing to make an offer. Yes, they can meet my salary requirements. Yes, they're a mere six blocks from my house. Yes, the company is so hip it has difficulty seeing over its own pelvis. Yes, the Web Services group is satisfyingly brainy. One of my interviewers had a PhD in astrophysics.

I would like to work in a place like this. Their problems are interesting. The company is sexy in that technology/entertainment industry kind of way. And best of all, my hair and general demeanor didn't phase them in the slightest.

As further evidence of the job market recovery, my friend Simon has landed a job after six months of unemployment. He is the first of my layoff-casualty friends to have regained employment and I take it as a hopeful sign. Simon went to art school. He basically a web creature. If he can find work in this muck and mire, then J and I may not wind up begging for change on Market St.

Just to be sure, J and I both went to interview with a couple of recruiting companies today. FutureComputer, my old mainstay, has been useless, but I went to visit places that had been recommended by friends and actually resulted in job interviews. J and I interviewed at one recruiter at the same time and had a ball listening to the reps talk behind our backs.

This one is going to be great.

I can place him, no problem.

We walked out of the office laughing like a couple of children, then we treated ourselves to dinner in North Beach, with flirtatious Italian waiters (this dish comes with a free massage, but only for the ladies) and tiramsu. I ate a risotto so heavily dosed with saffron that the spice tasted like honey on my tongue.

For the first time in a long time, I'm happy to be here, in a beautiful city with lovely weather and fantastic food and charming company, seven days from my birthday. I don't regret it. I can't regret a minute of anything that brought me to this place, happy and covered, just covered, in feathers.

Dear readers,

I've gone mad with power. Determined to use my talents for evil, I have holed myself up in my fabulously-decorated secret lair plotting revenge on those who ignored my genius. If I have been lax in updating this journal, it is because a force even more evil than I, the telecommunications industry, is slow in installing new DSL lines to underground laboratories no matter how many mutated flying monkeys I send to harass them.

Threatening them with my Death Ray has proven useless, since many minions of the telecommunications industry are so slow and stupid I suspect they died quite some time ago. Normally I would be forced to use my Haggis Ray, Scottish dining hall haggis being, as we all know, far worse than death, but the damned thing refused to turn on, so I sent it to a mechanic in the Mission and when I brought it back it turned everything into burritos. Now, the Cancun Vegetarian Burrito with Everything on It is quite tasty, but it does not strike fear into the hearts of my enemies.

Now I must be going because the tailor is here with a vast collection of leather swatches for my Supervillain costume. The lab coat is really quite frumpy. I've told him that I was interested in an X-Men/Farscape kind of look, but he has informed my that mad supervillains with Death Rays are required to wear some sort of cape.

I wrote a lengthy entry about my job interview on Monday, but then my browser crashed.

It comes down to this: the job is boring, inconveniently-located, and will probably not pay enough, but I'm scheduled for the second-round interview and I stand a very good chance of getting an offer. I don't want this job, but if they make an offer I don't think I can justify turning it down. None of the people I know who have been laid off have found new work. None of them! I can't sit here for very much longer and hope that I can wait out the job market. If I don't take this job, there is not necessarily a better offer waiting around the corner. I've made it this far by playing it smart. I was conservative with my money. I saved like a madwoman when all of my friends were buying houses and cars. I cannot turn my nose up at a job just because I don't like it. Some people spend their entire lives doing jobs they hate because they have obligations they need to meet. They were happy to have a job, any job at all. Life is not always roses. Sometimes you have to do things that you don't enjoy.

All the same, I'm calling all of the contractors, the headhunters, and the employed people that I know. I'm pulling every string I have access to. I'm calling in every favor I have ever been owed. I do have a little bit of pride left. I'm not going to take some dull biotech job if I don't have to.

I have 18 days left until my birthday. Funny, I feel much more than a year older. Every few months, my world changes completely. I'm not sure I like that.

Even though I don't believe in astrology, I'm a Leo. I know, I know, you can read anything you want into any of the signs. Horoscopes are just as accurate and meaningful if you read Scorpio or Pisces or all of them at once every week. But Leo is the sign of the arrogant, attention-grabbing bastard. The Leo's "planet" is the Sun and true to form, the world revolves around her. Well, at least in the best-case scenario. Sometimes is the Leo is a sad creature that thinks she's the center of the universe, but has nothing at all in her orbit. There's never a question of whether or not a Leo is arrogant. The only question is: does she have the talent to back up her talk?

A few more days and I could have been a Virgo. By all rights I should have been a Virgo. I was born almost a month premature. Virgo is the sign of the uptight, frigid bitch. Virgos are prissy. They're squirmish. They're obsessed with household order.

Many years ago, at Burning Man, some friends of mine formed Deadly Sunshine Cleaning Camp. We tore through other camps with garbage bags, mops, and brooms, striking without warning, showing no mercy, cleaning up everything in sight. We'd been cleaning like madmen all afternoon when we blundered into a small, shady camp, a camp that obviously didn't need us because everything was pristine. Not a single item was out of place. The campers were all asleep in the shade, wearing the self-satisfied smirks of children who had done all of their homework.

Virgo Camp.

Of course I wrote back to him.

He wanted to know what I was up to, so I told him, even the bit about being unemployed right now. In return, he told me he's still living in Washington, working as an electrician. He worked as an underwater welder for a while. He handled hazmat emergenies at some refinery. Now he's joined the Navy, working in explosive ordinance disposal.

I should have known. S isn't really happy unless something is in danger of blowing up.