Yipes, here it is already International Talk Like a Pirate Day, and I haven't posted a single thing in September. The holiday season always gets away from me.

I suppose this calls for one of those half-assed omnibus things I do when I've been a hopeless slacker...

19th - Possible Martha Stewart sighting - C says, "Yes." Or rather, "Yarrrrr!"

18th - Someone on the third floor of the apartment building kitty corner from mine has set up a bubble machine. I have a thing for soap bubbles, so I regard this as a great public service.

17th - After this morning, I will only have to get up and go to my job ten more times.

16th - Blur

15th - Blur

14th - I like to think my Danger Meter is pretty well calibrated: I've managed to avoid damaging incidents, and I don't have to contend with frequent bouts of paranoia. So when it goes into the red, I'm inclined to pay attention.

I'm waiting in the lobby of my office building for my lunch companion, and I notice a guy in red sweatshirt sitting on the ground. Then he gets up, makes a few odd circles, and sits again, mumbling to himself. The meter goes off, which strikes me as strange, because I see a lot of people on the street talking, even screaming to themselves, and they don't necessarily scare me. The guy in the red sweatshirt scared me, so I walked outside to wait there.

This was probably a mistake, because it seems to have caught his attention, and he followed me outside, still mumbling to himself and walking in circles, circles which were getting closer to where I'd placed myself with my back to a column.

By now I'm absolutely ready for my lunch companion to show up. He doesn't, so I walk away from the mumbling guy, who is now looking at me altogether too intently. I cross to the edge of the building, near the intersection, and lean against a large planter. The guy walks in the opposite direction, then loops back and leans against the planter about two feet from me. He leans over toward me, mumbling incoherently, but I can make out the phrase, "I want to tell you my name."

And the creepiness factor increases exponentially. I want to walk away, but I'm not wild about the idea of turning my back to this guy. Then I see R, my lunch companion, across the street, and I head out into the intersection to meet him. The guy follows.

I haven't seen R in ages, and he's cheerful and chatty when we meet, and he wants to know where we should go for lunch. I tell him we can figure that out as we walk, but we need to keep moving, because I'm being followed.

He responds gamely, with a joke about the FBI, and I tell him that I'm really not paranoid, and I'll explain shortly, I just can't quite yet. I look over my shoulder and see the guy still behind us. Then he ducks into an ATM alcove, and I start explaining the situation to R. I steer him around the next corner, and a block later there's no red shirt to be seen.

I was a little jumpy all day, though.

13th - Eric calls from Tokyo to tell me that the Japanese dubbing for Sam on "The West Wing" is very bad. The 21st Century is so bitchin'!

12th - Today I found out - and don't ask how - that Chinese IUDs are ring shaped. Also, I continue to be a fan of the gimlet.

11th - At least three sets of good intentions failed to materialize today.

10th - Dear Guest of the King County Jail: I'm sorry I was not home to take your calls at 5:28 and 5:48 p.m. - the recording on my answering machine informed me it would cost $2.00 to accept the charges, but, alas, it did not say who you were or what you wanted.

9th - Had a near miss with a Dance Dance Revolution machine. Thanks to B for taking the bullet instead.

8th - Man, I hate that Kerry has let the RNC maneuver him back on the defensive, and that he's descended to their level of rhetoric. "W stands for Wrong"?! Sheesh. We had better zingers in junior high. Soon I expect to see a headline that says, "Kerry to Bush: 'Moded!'"

7th - It's Fashion Week!!, it's Fashion We - oh, wait, that's right: I don't care.

6th - I actually take Labor Day seriously.

5th - Came home to find a note from Spontaneous Girl: "Had a wonderful time, wish you weren't here." Clearly she is up to no good.

4th - Possible Jack Black sighting - C says, "No."

3rd - Ice cream purchased while traveling is the best ice cream of all.

2nd - I was in a Starbuck's the other day (yeah, yeah - when I'm unemployed I won't even be tempted to feed the beast), and I heard one barista tell another "Howard Schultz was in the store yesterday," and before she was able to fully relay his assessment of their location, a customer interrupted with an enthusiastic, "What does Howard drink?" I was on my way out, so I didn't hear the whole response, but I did hear "non-fat". So Howard avoids those 700+ calorie venti mochas.

1st - Thirty days to unemployment. I think I can I think I can I think I can...