Hi, peops. Just checking in. I kind of lost my will to blog after I lost my glasses last month. Lost my interest in a lot of things, actually -- hard to muster it when you just. want. to claw your eyes out 'cause if you want to see, you have no choice but to wear contacts. But through one of my invisible friends, I was clued in to eyebuydirect.com, one of numerous 'net sites where you can buy specs for cheap. Got replacement glasses -- bifocals, no less -- for like $26 plus shipping. Hell, I couldn't have walked out of WallyWorld with a new pair for less than $175! The optometrist markup on these things is insane, apparently. So I can see again even when my eyes are dead tired and the contacts are back in their case. Although I like wearing them sometimes when I have the CHOICE (truthfully, on sunny days I love wearing sunglasses under the misguided impression that I actually look cool), I'm thinking I'll save the contacts I have left (they're disposables) for when I lose these glasses -- although, you know, I can get a pair of regular old non-bifocals, with just the distance prescription, for just $7 plus shipping. I expect I'll do that soon so I'll at least have a backup pair for watching TV if these go missing, too.

The new glasses are very close in shape to, if a bit smaller than, the old ones, which I liked well enough, though I suspect fashionistas would say that they were too big for my face. The color of the new ones is off a bit more than I like and don't really define my eyes very well, but they're still not bad, considering I had to dig out a ruler and guesstimate the dimensions of my old ones and rely on the site's online try-on tool for checking out how they'd look on my face. When I've successfully processed the loss of the old ones, perhaps I'll replace my profile picture with one of me in the new specs.

So, while I've been away from you all, I've been working too little and not doing much otherwise. The temp job I'd hoped would consume a couple of weeks in August did not come through, and I was left with just the weekend job. Had a yard sale after the graveyard shift one weekend, sitting outside without my contacts in because my eyes were just dying, and profited all of $1. A buck. Sold a late-'60s Fenway souvenir on eBay and did better -- $5.50. Wahoo. The other trinkets I hopefully put up there didn't sell at all, though I haven't completely exhausted my inventory.

So, August was all about the weekend job, and not doing anything so as not to spend money, and engaging in a lot of fetal-position-lying and navel-gazing, which, when I do it for extended periods of time, always sends me spiraling down into depression. The month was not especially fun, and I wasn't around people on a day-to-day basis, something that, when working a regular day job during the winter and spring, I came to realize mitigates my depression a lot more than I'd have expected, considering how much I've always valued my alone time. I did force myself to get back to some creative pursuits in August, so I made some minimal headway on my book (a lot of it, not for nothing, just watching the story take a fuzzy shape in my head) and freshened up an old cafepress.com shop (e-firmations) and opened a couple of other cafepress.com shops (can't remember the names right now) ... but of course, have not sold anything. I also worked through some shit in my head, or at least made some progress in that direction.

Have I mentioned that my depressions intensify in indirect proportion to the ever-shortening days?

Oh, on the upside (yes, there is one, even in my Eeyore-ish brain), I maintained a pretty regular beach-walking schedule, and one day even went for a 17-mile bike ride -- from my house, along the beach to the North Beach bathrooms and back. Nearly collapsed when I had but one mile to go, but that was largely due to poor planning; I took off for the ride on the spur of the moment, not anticipating going much farther than the southern end of Hampton Beach, so I didn't hydrate or bring any water with me. In other exercise news, was thrilled to learn that my roommate has a kayak she's willing to let me use, but lost my will for that, too, when I lost my glasses. Maybe I'll get in a fall paddle or two on the harbor, though.

This month, at least, I'll be getting back to my seasonal school tour guide work at a nearby orchard, so I'll have some source of income besides the weekend job (which, by the way, was the source of some paycheck anxiety this past week that I may elaborate on later). The orchard also, not a moment too soon, provided some early-season additional hours of the non-tour-guide kind, and I spent part of three days last week packaging and pricing bulk candy and snacks for the store. It was not good when I woke up early Friday, spent all day doing that, was unable to get to sleep before the graveyard shift job, then returned to the orchard for a few hours on the way home from that to finish the pricing work, but I will like it when I almost have some money later this week.

Oh, and last week I went to one of my temp agencies to take an assessment for various office-type jobs, and got an ego boost when I did above-average on all three -- data entry, typing and MS Word. Never done work *classified* as data entry, though I'd done work that required me to enter data, so maybe not much of a shock there. Only used Word casually, and then only an old version, so I was pleased that I successfully figured out how to perform functions I'd never used before, such as mail merge. Typing, of course, I've done most of my writing life, although my speed was faster than I'd have expected, since I rarely follow the protocol I learned in 9tn grade. So there's that. Bring on the data-entry/typing/Word jobs! Now if only I could learn Excel and Access.

I have also been reminded, through the work situation of another invisible friend, of one of my passions from my former life in journalism -- agitating to make sure that public entities conduct public business publicly when they try to shield from public view discussions that are supposed to occur openly. One of my favorite things as a reporter was protesting a particular small-town board's vote taken by secret ballot and getting them to redo it in open session. Small potatoes, maybe, but satisfying. Was thinking this latest conversation may be a sign pointing me toward a new career path, though I'm not sure just yet what shape that might take. Anyway, it's nice to feel a fire for a cause again. That has been long missing for me. Now if I can just figure out how to use it to pay the bills without a large cash outlay for retraining.

Oh yeah, and I voted in the NH statewide primary today.

'K bye.