I come home from a long, oppressive night of driving my cab. It's New Year's morning and it has been a busy night, though not nearly as busy as past years. As a result I am poorer than usual, leaving me grumpy and moody.

I walk in and find her asleep on my couch. My mood instantly lightens. We have been together for a month now and I am head over heels in love. I kiss her lips as she slowly opens her eyes. She is in love too.

Looking into her eyes, how could I possibly worry about anything?

Fresh hot coffee. Hollandaise sauce prepared in a makeshift double boiler. Poached eggs. Toasted muffin. Thin sliced turkey instead of Canadian bacon or ham (I've never been a fan of cured meats). Kat is in the kitchen making breakfast, even though it's 1:30 in the afternoon. It smells heavenly. I haven't had food in about 17 hours and I'm starving.

Food is love, and I'm not just saying that because I'm so hungry. I adore food. Its preparation, its consumption. Food never tastes so good as when it is lovingly prepared, even if it is something simple.

Bon appetit!

New love is intoxicating and like any drug it completely takes over your reality.

My rational mind doesn't like it when my heart runs amok. It has things to do, plans, ideas. All this mushy love crap just gets in the way! Take things in moderation, it says. There are other things to think about than how much you love her or miss her.

At the same time, my heart wants to know why things can't always be like this. Isn't Love the most powerful force in the universe? Isn't it our reason for being here in the first place?

I came home last night, thumping the cat with the door as it opened. She was crouched right behind it. At first I thought she wanted to go outside. Then I realized that she had a baby mouse cornered behind the door. I have no idea how it got in the house. The poor little thing ran franticly along the wall between the corner and the cat's food dish, then back again. Neferkitti, not really wanting to kill it, was content to simply chase. Finally, I managed to open the door and sweep the critter outside.
Mouse - 1
Cat - 0

He sat at the keyboard trying to remember what it was that seemed important enough to drive him to sit there in the first place. The inside of his mouth felt dry and furry, his eyes stung a little. There was a humming sound. It might have been the refrigerator or it might have been in his head, he didn't know. A clock ticked, keeping an unknown rhythm to a song he couldn't hear. Still, his mind would only hint at the Thing, the Idea. He picked at it like an old scab. And then his fingers began to type....

Whenever you meet someone new, you become schizophrenic. There's the "you"that you show the other person, all your most charming and appealing qualities. Once they're attracted to you, you start letting them in on the not so pleasant aspects of your personality. This is a given. But you've also got the skeletons that stay hidden so deep, they never come out. Kat and I have shared these secrets. We have introduced our skeletons to each other and ceremoniously buried them in the backyard. Now we may share our future together without the chains of the past holding us back.

Lucifer gets such a bum rap.

Lucifer means "light bearer."There was a time when he was seen as the bringer of wisdom and understanding. He was the bearer of Divine Light. In the early days of the church, Lucifer was synonymous with Christ. Christians named their children after him. There was even a bishop named Lucifer.

Now he is seen as the devil. He is equated with Satan, an entirely different archetype. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Light of Lucifer is the Light of the One and therefore it cannot be "evil.-

Don't believe the lies.

I need to go to the dentist but I don't have insurance and it would cost a fortune. So I keep procrastinating, putting off getting my three cavities fixed, or capping that tooth in the back.

One of the hazards of being self employed is that insurance is so bloody expensive! It would cost $460 a month to get Kaiser. That's the monthly payment on a new luxury automobile. Insurance shouldn't be a luxury item, only for the well to do. Basic medical care should be a right that all Americans have. Wouldn't a healthy country be a stronger one?

Time for a little therapeutic ink. It's been a couple of weeks since I've been in to see my tattooist, Sarah. She's an awesome girl, very talented. She was working as a bartender when I met her. She would tattoo me out of her house. Over the last couple of years she has done 5 large color pieces and is now working on a sixth. We are putting cat's eyes on the insides of my elbows, the "elbow-pit,"if you will. It doesn't hurt nearly as bad as I thought it would. That's a relief - I'm not into pain.

I remember when I was a kid in elementary school they used to teach us that, in the event of nuclear war, we should get under our desks. This would keep us safe from the broken glass when the windows shattered. Somehow, those little wooden desks with our initials so carefully carved in the top were supposed to protect us from the entire school building falling down around us as well, not to mention the searing heat and radiation that would no doubt burn our little bodies to a crisp. Duck and Cover was just another Santa Claus, wasn't it?

I don't understand this whole fashion trend of wearing baggy pants that sag way down past your ass and wearing your hat at a 45 degree angle. Okay, it would be one thing if this were a new fashion and we hadn't been looking at it for the last 15 years. There isn't anything new about this style. All it succeeds in doing is demonstrating that this particular generation is so brain dead from watching video games and television that they can't be creative enough to think of their own style and come up with their own trends. How lame...

I have to do laundry today. I really don't care for the laundry facilities in my apartment building. There are 10 apartments sharing one washer and one dryer, and the dryer doesn't even work right. I could go to a laundromat but then I wouldn't be able to play on my computer while the clothes are washing. I'd have to just sit there and wait. I hate waiting. I could take a book but I can never read in those places. All the people watching is too distracting. I guess I'll just deal with the crappy machines here at home.

It's been a very slow night for taxi business. One of those nights we cabbies tend to spend in parking lots gossiping with each other or parked in front of a hotel reading a good book. It's January so tips are hard to come by. Everybody's worried about paying off their credit cards and other holiday debt. It's hard to stay out on nights like this, it's hard to have a good work ethic. The temptation to cut out early is very strong. On the bright side, tomorrow is Friday the 13th. Maybe everyone will be too superstitious to drive.

Kat drew a picture of someone holding a sign that reads, "The absurdity of our political situation compels me to hold this pointless sign."That aptly describes my feelings about what is going on around me. I feel like anything I were to do would equate to nothing more than holding a pointless sign. Standing on a street corner being purposefully ignored by passersby, tuned out by tunnel vision. We are being herded like sheep, kept passive with trinkets and gizmos and a false sense of individual identity. Meanwhile, corporate powerbrokers symbolically and literally rape, pillage and plunder the planet.

It's been raining nearly every day for about the last 2 months. Just another NW winter. We don't get snow here, not much anyway. It rains gallons though. Some people can't handle it. I understand. Some folks need regular sun or they begin to wilt. The Pacific NW is the wrong place for these people. Me, I love the rain. I love the sound, the smell, the feel in the air. I don't really like major fluctuations in weather and temperature. Winters here are consistent. Expect rain and temperatures in the low to mid 40s. I can deal with that.

I tried smoking salvia for the first time. As the high came on, I felt less of a "buzz"and more of a "smooth."My perception of everything softened. As the high increased, I felt like I was folding in on myself. It was an intriguing feeling and not at all unpleasant. I closed my eyes and experienced the sensation and when I reopened them I was surprised to find the room was still there. Everything had an outline, as though it had been drawn there. After 10 minutes, the high was gone and things were back to normal again.

I ran away from home when I was 13. I lived in Denver at the time. Me and the kid next door (I think his name was James or something like that) packed our bags and started thumbing our way east. We left on a Sunday. By Monday afternoon, we were in Garden City, Kansas, mostly thanks to a traveling salesman from Oklahoma who picked us up on I-70. Within 15 minutes of getting out of his car, we were arrested by Garden City's finest. We spent the night in jail and by Tuesday afternoon we were home again.

I play with words in a hopeless attempt to define what you do to me, to describe the chemical reaction of blended emotions raging in my soul when I think of you. Words are worthless for such a task, for they only seek to limit that One Infinite Thing. The words I need to describe such a completely overwhelming flood of euphoric bliss haven't been created yet. Inadequate as they are, words are all I have to tell you that you are the brightest star in my sky. You are my Goddess. You are my world. And I love you.

When I was a little boy, one of my favorite things was to go on walks with my Grandpa. We would walk through the woods of western Montana, along rutted dirt roads that meandered on and on as though they went forever. Grandpa would tell me stories about the "olden days"and answer my questions about the antique rusted lumber equipment we would find scattered by the side of the road. I still remember those walks so vividly, the smells, the sounds. Of all the joys of childhood, I was never so happy as when I was with my Grandpa.

"What's the craziest fare you ever had?-

I hate it when a passenger asks this question. Even though I've had more than enough "crazy fares,"I never know how to answer. Was it the girl who talked about how gross it had been to give a total stranger head in the parking lot? The woman who was sure that I was with the government and that I had been sent to follow her? The couple who took me to the casino for a couple hours of gambling? I never know what to say so I usually just make something up.

I think Neferkitti's finally getting used to the new apartment. We've been here about 3 months now. It's not so much the inside of the apartment, but going outdoors that was difficult for her. There are lots of cats in the building and she had to find her place in the pecking order. She was afraid to go out at first, only doing so sporadically. Gradually, however, she has made the adjustment and now she's back to normal, begging to go outside every 5 minutes. I'm glad to see that, she's a much happier cat when she can go outdoors.

Kat and I met through CraigsList. I had placed several ads over a period of 9 months, mostly just screwing around. I decided to place a real ad, something that was very honest and straightforward and painted a more complete picture of me. I went into great detail about as many different things as I could. It took 2 weeks to write the ad and when I was done, it over a full document page in length. I posted it with a recent picture. The response was overwhelming! One of those was from Kat.
(Lesson: It pays to be honest!)

Why does dealing with customer service reps over the phone have to be such a major ordeal? What ever happened to companies that cared about their customers and went out of the way to insure that the customer was satisfied? I recently had a Comcast representative tell me that she was sorry I haven't received a bill for 3 months but they're really not required to send me a bill, that's just a courtesy. A courtesy?! And here I was stupid enough to think that I was doing them a courtesy by giving them my business in the first place!

Sometimes more than just winter weather makes the night feel so cold. I'm watching the city scroll past me on the other side of the glass like a movie that I've seen too many times before. After a while, all the faces begin to look the same and every stranger becomes part of the great Them. As I look upon the swarming masses of all who are not Me, I try to ignore the knowledge that I too am one of Them, that I am part of the swarm, not separate from it. Sometimes it's more than I can take.

The government recently indicted 11 people on charges of domestic terrorism. The "Bush People"said that Earth First and Animal Liberation groups are at the top of the list of domestic terrorists and are the government's number one priority. Never mind that none of these groups have ever killed anyone (unlike, for example, white supremacists. Remember Oklahoma City?). All that these leftist groups have done is destroy Corporate Property. It's nice of "W"to make his position on the domestic terrorism issue so abundantly clear. Apparently to the Bush administration, Corporate Property has a much greater value than human life.

I hate doing dishes. I don't have a dishwasher so I hate doing them even more. When I first move into a new place, I do a pretty good job of keeping up on them. As time goes by, however, I get more and more lazy, finding more reasons to procrastinate. I always seem to run out of time before I get to them. There are a lot of dirty dishes in the sink right now. They're calling to me. I really need to go get them done - and I will! - as soon as I'm done writing my 100 words...

I want my own castle. It wouldn't have to be too big but it would have to have at least one tower. It would be deep in the woods, it's great stone walls hidden amongst the trees. It would have a well stocked library, filled with beautiful old books and classic works of literature. There would be a garden in an indoor courtyard, complete with waterfall and fruit trees. There would be hidden doors and passageways that only I would know of. In the cellar, of course, would be a stunning wine collection. Everyone's got to have a dream, right?

Today was the big day. I met Kat's parents for the first time. I'd been a little nervous all week but as the day got closer, it didn't seem to bother me as much. Kat, on the other hand, got a bit nuts. As it turned out, she was much more nervous than I was and actually spazzed out at one point. Still, things went fine. We had a nice dinner and some good conversation. I like her folks and, as far as I can tell, they like me. I'll learn more tomorrow when we tour a few local wineries.

Wine. Possibly one of the finest of man's many creations. Even thought I've lived in Oregon for 10 years, I had only toured a single winery - until today. Most notable were Erath and Maresh, the latter having one of the best Pinot Noirs that I have ever tasted. Kat and I bought a bottle for $40. At the Shafer Vineyards, we picked up a couple bottles of a nice dry Riesling that will no doubt be consumed rather quickly, along with a couple bottles of a delicious fruity Chardonnay (that I won't have to share since Kat doesn't drink it!).

I have no idea what to write about today. No clue at all. It could be anything. It could be something true, something that actually happened or something I made up off the top of my head. I could rant and rave about whatever bee is in my bonnet at the moment. My mind is a blank. I wish I could think of a subject, anything. Perhaps I should just start writing random words and hope they turn into something profound.

I'm starting to get a headache.
I'll get back to you later when I think of something to write.

So here it is, the last entry of the month. The Finish Line. This is my first month of doing 100 Words. At first, I didn't think I'd have the tenacity to stick to it every day. I thought I'd procrastinate at some point or lose interest. Neither has happened, in fact I've been looking forward to this daily ritual. Oh, I'm sure there will be several months in the coming year that I'll flake out on and not complete, and eventually I'll stop altogether. As for January, it's a small victory and now I'm patting myself on the back.