Maybe there's something to this whole waking up before noon thing people are always talking about.

Rain, rain, rain, the house is bombarded and the new bikes look like barricades. I don't believe there's anything outside the door except rain. Someone put up a backdrop so that it looks like there are wet dead leaves, droopy budding plants, and Cary Grant approaching the house, smiling and waving. Wait a minute, that is Cary Grant. What does he want?

In the last week, I was offered a job at Borders. This is the first job offer (which, indeed, resulted from the frist interview) I have ever gotten at Borders. I applied in Ellicott City, Annapolis, Los Angeles, Pasadena, and once previously in Santa Fe. They used to have the most annoying paper application of any retail store, two pages front and back with a request that the applicant list and describe employment and account for periods of inactivity over the last five years. I filled out that application maybe eight times, over the course of six years. I still have hand cramps from filling out that application. I never got a call.

Some time around last year they changed to an electronic, internet-based application, which requests even more information (professional AND personal references, area of college focus, reasons for leaving previous positions) and then had a personality test to see if the applicant is a leader, friendly, talkative, enjoys large groups, likes going out or staying in, enjoyed high school or thought about dropping out, likes filling out personality tests, likes lime with restaurant water . . . for thirty-five web pages. Five questions on each page. Filling it out eats up more time than the verbal portion of the S.A.T.s I did the electronic application in November to maybe get a Christmas season job while I wasn't at the library. I called them twice to ask if they were hiring, and went to the info desk to see if I could speak with a manager about my application. No response.

All I wanted was to be a bookseller. Most people might think that three years of supermarket, restaurant and cafe work, a job at a library, a four-year degree from a prestigious book-filled school, might make my application stand out.

I applied one more time last month, finally got an interview which went well, set up a second interview which also went well, and was hired . . . to work in the cafe.

I would have taken it, because I could use the money, and cafe workers still get a store discount; maybe if I stayed there for a few months, I could even be a book seller. Actually, I did take it, but two days ago I called back and turned them down. The other library supervisor quit, and once spring break is over, I will have thirty hours and five work days a week at the library and so I likely couldn't work out a good schedule at Borders. It could have been so beautiful.

I went out today to a place called Bobcat Bite, miles outside of town where the trees form the closest thing to an ocean within two hundred miles, and the road looks like it's going to ascend to the sky after the next turn. The Bite itself is a small shack, about the size of a medium gas station convenience store; only half of that is tables. There's a large, hilly gravel lot, and a roofed porch where people can wait to get inside. The building is wooden, with a picture window and wall mosaics of kachinas on both sides of the door.

(Jess, is this the place you wanted to go to? I'm sorry we didn't make it. Hopefully over the summer. Scott, you might want to consider building up a meat tolerance. Greg, continue writing the blog.)

Alanna asked me if I wanted to go with her, because she felt like having a burger with somebody. She was inviting everybody who's in town over spring break, and two other people came, one a senior in Annapolis, the other a Santa Fe '06 graduate. Alanna and I got there first; she had written my name on the dry-erase board (complete with an inlaid photo of a bobcat) tacked on the outside wall, used as a table list. "I never like writing my own name on those things," she said. I wiped my name off and put hers. I don't like taking the responsibility of communicating with the staff. We talked loosely for a bit, and then a waitress came out and looked at the board. "A-lane-a?"

"Yes."

"We have a table if you're ready."

"You can skip us. Two other people haven't shown up yet."

Then she erased her name and wrote "Byron", the '06 graduate.

Saying that we weren't ready yet was perhaps a bad play. Her friends arrived around 7:15; we got a table a little bit after 8.

When they showed up, I realized that I recognized both of them, and they both recognized me. I stayed quiet for about half an hour, because that's just how I roll. I roll observant. I found that both of them are a type I never really got to know at St. John's: social, thin, aware, a little bit artistic, interested in word play and constantly acting out impromptu comic roles. Then again, maybe that describes most of my friends in Annapolis and I just didn't know it. Yes, come to think of it, that describes most of my friends in Maryland in high school too. Huh. This is something of a revelation. I'll definitely have to think about this more. For some reason I'm fascinated by the sort of relationships I observed tonight. I definitely lack them now for the most part, and even in the past I was always in the outskirts. People who have a response when asked, "What are you doing this weekend?" People who tell stories about things that happened to them in the last month. People who always seem to be keeping an eye on everyone around them to make sure they're being approved of. Does this make sense to anyone reading this? I've always thought that I perceive people in a way others don't recognize, and I feel a bit embarrassed when I try to describe it because it sounds like I'm full of shit.

Anyway, Bobcat Bite. Yes. The woman who had earlier mispronounced Alanna's name popped out every ten minutes and gave us updates on the table situation. We were waiting for one of two parties to leave, because there were only two tables that could seat four people, and each time she had to tell us that we couldn't come in yet. Finally, just before 7:50, she took our order while we were still outside, because they shut down their grill around then. Alanna kept asking people if we were also really hungry, or also excited, because she likes to create bonds, I guess.

Some of the people finally left, and we sat down. Everything looks very humble inside, with a six-stool bar, five round wooden tables, and pictures of Bobcats all over the walls. There isn't much room between any of the tables, and everyone is close to one wall or another. Our food came a few minutes after we sat down, and oh, wow, I've never seen burgers that look quite this good. These things are as thick as two ordinary burgers, perfectly formed and grilled, thick and juicy. This doesn't translate well into words, maybe, but afterward, Alanna asked me, "Do you feel the passion yet?" And I did. It was the first time I ever felt an inward glow after eating a hamburger. It may just have been my body's diversion of energy to my stomach to begin digesting this monster, but I felt it. Like I'd just finished swimming in the ocean, or touring a room full of Klee paintings. I just wanted to smile. It was a hamburger high.

I am nearing the end of Flaubert's works after a month and a half. I've been reading them along with Frederick Brown's biography of Flaubert, published last year. This is the first time I've read everything an author wrote; I did it almost on a whim, although not exactly without reason.

I've read his books so quickly that I don't think I learned much from them, at least not as much as I could, but I've gotten something from them. Each of his books is different from the others, and everything he wrote in maturity is masterful. His interests and affinities were somewhat cramped, but his talent was unbounded. The novels stand apart from their time, as do those of all great writers; but I can't help thinking that something about them is even more set apart than other authors, that they are, in some way I can't place yet, intensely unique. Flaubert seemed to have no direct predecessors or followers. He took influences from many places but made something new with them. Many authors who came after him revered his books, but none that I know of wrote in the same vein. His works aren't part of a literary movement, and they don't seem to be products of their time (aside from the fact that they're set against the noteworthy events that took place in France during Flaubert's life). Even the most original authors, Melville, Joyce, Woolf, Nabakov, seem at least in retrospect to fit in with aesthetic trends and to exist in a community of related ideas. With Flaubert, there's nothing of the sort.

I find his life interesting as well. Flaubert impresses me as almost an alter-ego, if I had more dedication and talent. He revelled in silliness mixed with mockery, chose certain subjects of study and researched them exhaustively, and when he was writing, had style ideas rather than story ideas. But he also had ideas about relationships with women that are completely unlike mine; survived on family wealth, which I can never expect to do; and knew what he wanted to do with his life.

The idea of seriously studying literature has been a half-formed ambition of mine for some time. I still haven't figured out how best to go about it. I started studying Flaubert almost by chance: every month I read Library Journal along with the other librarians, to see if there are any books I think the library might want to acquire. Last month's issue mentioned Brown's biography of Flaubert, stating that Brown was an accomplished scholar who had succeeded at writing a definitive biography. This got my attention, since when I had read "Un coeur simple" senior year, I was impressed by how singular and origingal it was, and I've wanted to examine Flaubert's other works ever since. The library happened to have Brown's book, so I started looking through it right then, while at work, just to see what it was like; my interest grew as I read it, so I checked it out. As it began to describe the periods of Flaubert's life when he was writing his books, I decided to read each one in turn as I got up to them in the biography, so that those sections wouldn't be blank spots for me.

This is pretty indicitive of how I go about choosing what to study. I keep meaning to come up with a more logical plan for myself, but until I do, my passions will ignite and cave in on themselves almost on a regular schedule. I can't tell which of these passions would hold the most interest for me in the long term, which I would like to study in graduate school. I can't even tell if I would ultimately enjoy studying literature specifically, or if it's just curiosity.

My goal with studying German is to commit myself to a single language, randomly chosen for all intents and purposes, and master it. I've always wanted to learn a language but kept cycling from one to the next, and so I decided to pick one and linger with it. I'm hesitant to do something similar with a more broad academic study, such as the study of literature, because it would be an even more extensive commitment; because conceivably not all subjects are equally rewarding; because it's less clear how to go about it logically than it is with langauges; because almost every subject seems related to others. This is one of the great nagging questions of my present life. It seems that up until the day I die, I will be searching for the meaning and direction that should determine all of my actions. My search for meaning is a logical search, based on the clarification and exclusion of options, the desire to gain more complete knowledge so that I can manage my time more reasonably, and constant curiosity about the things I'm not doing, the people I don't know, the times I don't live in. Incidentally, Flaubert parodies just this sort of passion in his last, unfinished novel, Bouvard and Pecuchet. Perhaps if only had finished the book, I would know what to do with my life.

My tongue has blisters all over the side, where it came into contact with a mouth guard a dentist told me to wear while I slept because I was grinding my teeth. My tongue has hurt for four days now. I think if I knew it was going to continue for the rest of my life I'd commit suicide.

When I showed the blisters to the dentist, she told me to take Benedryl, and now I am sleepy all of the time. I have become even more sleepy than I normally am. Even when I wake up, I can't concentrate on anything for more than two minutes before I

I went to the hospital two days ago to get a cocktail frank transfusion. It was risky, but I probably wouldn't be alive to write this without it. I was strapped to a confectionary oven for two hours, receiving liquidized hot dogs in one arm, mustard in the other. Nurses and receptionists were standing around chatting with each other in the hallway in voices so annoying that if I had forgotten where I was, that alone would remind me; and the doctor was busy putting on a puppet show of the temptation of St. Anthony when he should have been taking the needle out of my arm, but thank God, I got enough coctail franks to last me a few more days. I woke up this morning, finally, and found that the transfusion had been entirely successful. The doctor said that if I become hungry again, I should be okay with store-bought cocktail franks. I am eating twenty of them right now.

We have gotten two packages of the highest import in the last week. The first was a small FedEx box which we came home to find on our doorstep on Wednesday the 27th of February. We didn't see it through the gate, but once we turned the corner, we saw immediately what felicity was now ours. Indeed, we felt like documenting the moment, so I unlocked the door and Anne got our camera and took pictures of the box from many angles, then I took pictures of Anne walking into the house with the box, opening the box, and finally removing its contents: a pizza from a Brooklyn pizzeria, frozen and so full of delicious that it cost nothing to ship. It was packaged inside of a plastic bag, with four rows between wax paper, two slices per row. We infused the pizza with heat and crushed red peppers, ate it, and hibernated for the next several days, having taken in enough deliciousness to simply rest in contentment.

The next package came on Friday, this one considerably larger and clearly containing something even more awesome, since it had a physical presence that was difficult to ignore. "It must be Jess's wedding gift!" Anne said, and she attacked the taped center with scissors. Once she got it open, she began to jump and sing impromptu hymns to joy. We now have a fondue pot. Last night we found a can of Sterno, and tonight we will, for the first time in recorded history, melt cheese and dip bread and apples and broccoli into it in our very own home. We are sending a letter of thanks to the Swiss government for the invention of fondue, and another to Jess, for whom we have begun praying that he be accorded the status of a demigod. With this much deliciousness, I will no longer have to be awake more than two hours of the day, just long enough to enjoy the fondue.