Yesterday, I made honey-oatmeal bread for the first time. It's the first loaf of bread that I've made that actually rose to full size and looked like a proper loaf of bread.

The honey added a nice sweetness to it that made it especially tasty. Ravyn, I used some of that Swamp Honey (I have a jar, too). I swear that's some of the tastiest honey I've ever had--I think there's something in the mix that tastes like citrus flower honey.

The fruitcakes I made two weeks ago are still curing in the fridge, of course. I soak them with rum.

I'm in the Bay area of California, and it's raining! There's wet drippy stuff outside my window, and the sky is grey and the ground is wet. I'm told this is very early in the season for rain. I wonder if I'll get a chance to see those brown hills turn green?

Addendum: I walked over to Maria Elena's for an early dinner. The air was still moist, a misty drizzle that you could just barely feel, and very, very fresh. The damp brought out the smells of all the wild herbs in the area, and the air was ripe with the scent of wild fennel. It was like walking through licorice.

Maria Elena's fish tacos are absolutely awesome! I recommend trying them if you're ever in the area.

( Cut for pink hat )

Job hunting has always been the most demoralizing thing I do in my life. Funerals are more fun. But posting application after application, and either hearing nothing at all ("Did my e-mail with resume vanish into a black hole, or what?") or the usual "Sorry, you don't meet our needs at this time" just frankly sucks. Nothing like rejection after rejection, day in and day out, to make you appreciate yourself... as a useless waste of space who is obviously not competent to function as an adult in the Real World.

Now I'm getting a new twist: "Sorry, but we require more recent experience." Never mind that I've been out of the job market for five years because of family obligations and a fucking hurricane wrecking my town, all they care about is I haven't worked in my career field since late 2002.

So if you stop working in a technical field for a few years, what, you're supposed to just go on welfare or work a minimum wage job for the rest of your life? You can't start back up at maybe a lower level of seniority or something?

From what I saw of my fellow contractor-programmers when I was working, even with five years of rust, I'm smarter and better than 90% of the wallys out there. But will I get a chance to prove it?

It's been one of those weeks where I seriously empathize with Dead End. I've been unaccountably depressed, stressed and prone to bursting into tears over the least little thing. And had to stay home sick from work yesterday. Still don't feel so good.

It's been a stretch of those last few days where I feel that everything I do is pointless, that I'm just wasting lifespan in a life that doesn't mean much to begin with. I've been writing a lot in the last few weeks, which means I should be happy, because I love writing, but I'm in one of those moods where I feel like my writing sucks, everyone else is way better than me, and no one will like what I've written so I might as well just toss it. I've got too many responsibilities that I haven't kept up on because I've been writing and working 8 hours a day, so that gets to me, too.

Right now, I suck, my writing sucks, life sucks, and I'll die in 40 years or so if I'm lucky.

Yeah, I can get into Dead End's headspace and write him--if I can stop being depressed long enough to type. How's that for irony?