Last week a man I met recently invited me to get together for coffee – a pseudo-date, I suppose. He’d learned that I had an interest in black & white photography, so he asked me to bring some of my photos along. I gathered a few of my favorites, slipped them into a large envelope, and headed for Coffee Plantation. When I got there, I noticed my pseudo-date had a large photo album with him. He told me that since he’d brought up the subject of photography, he decided to bring along photos from his climbing expedition in Africa last summer. We went through the book cover-to-cover: Postcards of London. Maps of the region. A trip itinerary. English translations of common phrases. And page after page of photos from his week-long expedition. He never did ask to see my photos. I think he was trying to impress me with his overseas expedition, but what would have really made an impression would have been if he’d shown more interest in me and less in himself. Don’t they have seminars where guys can learn these sorts of things?

I like the grass-green Volkswagen Beetle, but it seems to fall in the category of "fun car" instead of "practical, everyday car." Or, worse, it could come off looking like the sort of vehicle someone buys when they're trying to come across as more freespirited than they really are. Like the middle-aged accountant I used to work with who drove a bright-yellow car to work every day. One of my co-workers spotted it in the parking lot one day, rolled her eyes and said, "There's Bob's mid-life-crisis car." Of course, who really cares what anyone thinks? I'm just not sure my love of grass-green would endure for the life of the car - something to think about, since I've had the car I'm driving now for eight years.

I'm doing freelance work for a community college, and have started working out of the school's Public Relations office on Fridays. Last Friday, the Marketing Coordinator invited me to lunch and picked up the tab. Friday night some friends from church invited me to join them for a movie and dinner - and paid for both. It's nice that people are aware that money's a little tight for me right now. When I do get settled into a new full-time job, I'm tempted to keep it to myself for a while and see how long the charity continues....

Since I'm working quite a bit from home now, I've decided it's time to invest in high-speed Internet service. The extra expense will be worth it - I figure I'd end up spending that much and more in psychiatry fees if I continue much longer with dial-up service.

Jimmy Osmond turned 40 yesterday. That's hard to grasp, since I think of him as eternally 12. He probably even has a wife by now. (Maybe even several.)

I probably have no readers left, since I’ve neglected to write much in the past few weeks. I was officially laid off last Tuesday, and life has been a whirl since then. I kept thinking that I should write something poignant about the seven and a half years I spent working for a children’s hospital - what I considered my “dream job” for nearly all of that time. But I’ve been working to piece together an income - between a part-time, temporary job and assorted freelance projects - and any would-be poignant writing has taken a back seat to the kind of work that pays the bills. I have leads on several jobs that sound pretty good, though it’s been kind of hard to get very excited about any of them. When you’ve written about kids with cancer, kids who’ve endured one surgery after another, kids who’ve beat all odds against surviving, all the other jobs seem flat by comparison. At least for now....