Hmmm. They are talking about sending three members of my group to the field to aid in the testing of our company developed software on the Windows 2000 desktop. I don't believe we need to do that, there are better, more effective uses for our time, but if it happens I will be sent to Europe and probably within the next two or three weeks. You up for that drink, Rien? I probably won't get any closer than Rotterdam and even then only for a day or two with long hours buried in some computer room, but maybe there's a way to tack a couple of days at the end so I can shoot photographs in London or rent a car and drive over to meet the mad Dutchman. There really are a lot of good reasons to keep us at home, our European people being more than competent enough to take care of themselves for starters, but you never know. Life is strange. One day you're here, one day you're there, one day you're nowhere at all.

I don't know that I've been drifting any more than usual, entries without middles or ends, but plenty of nouns and adjectives. I read fewer and fewer journals anymore, mostly the old ones I started with. The journal landscape changes, as all things change. Fresh blood. Enthusiasm. Determination. Talent. People seem to work out their whatevers and then go on to something else. I am still shooting photographs, but I need to change the mix to keep my interest. I still feel good when the negatives come back. I still feel good when a picture turns out. Most of them don't, but enough of them do. The writing, well, I don't know. Is this writing? I've been thinking of changing the format and inventing one or two characters, not so much for story development, of which I know little, but just for fun. Wasn't there someone way back who wrote a newspaper column set in a bar? Very folksy, very ethnic, very popular? Might be fun to try that, although I might not last a month.

I have this feeling I need to really push it off the map, off the table and out of the room to a point where I don't know if it's new territory or I've snapped. Shouldn't be so hard to do, particularly if I do it on a new site. No name, no email, no web rings and no readers while the bugs are worked out. I'm writing this to sell myself on the concept. It's working. Sort of.

Hi, ho. I've said this before, a thousand times on a thousand days, a mind forever spinning in neutral. Friday, sunny day, the temperature just right. A good time to go down and buy a quart of beer and rent a movie. Nothing playing nearby that makes any sense. Nowhere I want to drive. Over across the way some guy is shouting at the top of his lungs about something or other. Friday in the early evening, very drunk. Not a lot of that around here, but it brings back memories of another time and another place. Don't really miss the crazies. Much.