My nerves seem to have settled down a little bit. Maybe it was just the Swedish meatballs. You know, the ones you eat on Christmas Eve. What?

I’m in the process of packing up all of my worldly possessions, plus a few that aren’t mine. Holy moly baloney cannoli do I have a lot of junk. At least a third of the clothes I’ve found so far have gone into the goodwill box. About a quarter to a third of everything else has just gone into the trash. Man, I had no idea I was such a hoarder. Wait, yes I did.

On Wednesday, a bunch of big men who are stronger than me and probably beat guys like me up in high school but whose primary source of income is now lifting things come to load all of this crap into a truck to bring it down to my apartment in Delran, NJ. I know what you’re thinking, and I’ve never heard of Delran, NJ, either. Apparently, I live there now.

I just found out that camera phones aren’t allowed at Lockheed. I was expecting it. We’re talking about a company who’s best customer is the United States Freaking Military here. But, it’s still gonna be weird being cut off from my phone during the day. I can at least forward calls to my cell over to my desk, but I’m gonna have to forsake my beloved text messages. They also block IM apps there. No AIM for me at work. *convulses momentarily*

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I’d been waiting until all the paperwork had gone through before I really started talking about this. Now it has, and so now I will.

No amount of attention diversion could ever tune out the intractable bitching and moaning in which I’ve allowed myself to indulge over the past six months in response to my constant failure to get my career off the ground. It seemed almost karmically retributive that Val Korszniak, whom I will be more than willing to call Daddy from now on if he asks nicely, would make a completely unsolicited call to my cell phone, inviting me to an informal interview for a research position at Lockheed Martin.

I get there in a dress shirt and tie, and he and a colleague are waiting for me in khakis and polo shirts - at a family restaurant. He wasn’t kidding about the informality. I think we spent just as much time talking about The Far Side as we did talking about the research. Anyway, two weeks later, they had an offer for me.

Another three weeks later, I got a check for $3000 in the mail, to help me move. Jesus, I must’ve been murdered on the toilet in a past life if I deserve this.

So on January 3rd, I’m set to begin an awesome job at an awesome company for an awesome salary, and all of it can be traced back to one guy calling me one day and saying, “Here.” The fact that my lap’s gravity seems to have mysteriously increased worries me a great deal.

It’s all Newtonian physics, you see. At least at the macro level, when an object can be easily pulled from the influence of another object, it can just as easily be put back there. All you have to say to realize why all of this worries me so much is “vice-versa.” This all just kind of tumbled into me, and I can’t help but think it can all tumble right back out again, leaving me where I started, only stuck in a year long apartment lease that’s gonna cost me about $1500 to get out of.

The pressure shouldn’t be too bad at the beginning. The job is going to start off with a two-month handshake period between me and Bryson, the guy I’m replacing so he can move on to something better. After that, however, assuming I’m interpreting Val’s words properly, they’re just going to hand it off to me and say “go.” This is the part where reality gets the best of me, and I start autistically repeating the phrase “Crap, oh mother crap.” Results. Aww, hell, they want results.

Val’s made his high expectations for me crystal clear, and he’s not even my boss. I don’t dare imagine how many walking lame and seeing blind Val’s told the supervisor to count on finding when I start there. I hate it when people put that kind of faith in me. If I screw up, and believe me when I say that the fear of failure is going to be my primary driving motive, I’m in a big ol’ bundle o’ trouble. I work beautifully under pressure, but I’d still rather not be under the stuff.

As my first day approaches, and the “Holy bludgeoning fuck, I’ve really gotta do this” factor starts to turn into more of an exponent, I can only hope that my nerves don’t suddenly conflagrate on me, ’cause then I’ll really have a tough time living up to whatever it is I have to live up to.

Unless they’re expecting me to be some kind of stuntman who lights himself on fire and stuff. I’d better take a picture if it happens, just in case.

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Paul, my cat, upon whom Paul, the cat, is based, has been sitting on my bed, cleaning his left hind leg, for nearly a half-hour now. Just now, I turned around, and said to him, “Paul.” He looked up at me, as if he recognized his name. “It’s clean,” I told him. He looked me in the eye for a moment, considered my argument, and then went back to cleaning his leg.

This should give you an idea of how easy it is for me to get distracted from studying.

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I’m sitting in class at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, NJ right now, utilizing a nearby Wi-Fi point that someone was kind enough not to encrypt. As I take a cautious sip of a surprisingly robust house blend medium roast from the Java City stand downstairs, something occurs to me that makes me want to curse - or at least curse at - RadioShack, my place of current employ: those lousy emeffers got me lovin’ coffee again.

Waaaayyyyy back in high school, all those five long years ago, I used to have a cup of coffee before leaving the house, and then another one when I got to school. During the winter, I’d also grab one midway through the day. On trips with the marching band (shut up), I’d have about half a dozen over the course of a given weekend. I don’t think I ever really got hooked on the stuff, probably due to the gastrointestinal consequences to which I seem to be susceptible, but I probably drank as much coffee as most high school kids smoked cigarettes.

Thank God I eventually discovered Mountain Dew, which is much more refreshing, and is an order of magnitude better at killing off those pesky gametes that are probably just going to get me into a world of monetary straits some day, anyway. The Dew carried me through college, negating any real need for coffee. I think I might have had five cupsa over the course of my studies there.

Then, I graduated, failed to find a job, and ended up back at RadioShack for the third time. Kinda sucked having to fall back on the ol’ Shack job, but whatever. Thing is, though, what would just happen to be right next door to my new store but a Double Dee, that 24-hour breakfast haven, Dunkin Donuts. Thanks to RadioShack having the audacity to put a store next to a Dunkin’s, I now down anywhere from two to four large light-and-sweet Hazelnuts three days out of the week. My pee stinks like hell.

They should’ve known better. My little sister is absolutely adicted to that sour black liquid, and she’s essentially me with better study habits and not as many penises. If RadioShack had just paid attention to this simple fact, I wouldn’t be burning the roof of my mouth on a semi-hourly basis at work. Bastards.

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I just ordered World of Warcraft a few minutes ago, after spending a week telling myself I wouldn’t. I’m not sure why I caved, I’ve never really been able to find a MMOG that I could stick to for longer than the free month, but I don’t doubt that it can in some way be attributed to my will having the resistive force of a Kleenex underneath Niagara Falls on a day when Earth’s gravity has somehow increased a hundredfold, and there’s, like, somebody cutting the tissue with a pair of scissors or an acid chainsaw or something. Maybe it’s a hot chick dressed up as Hermione, too. I don’t know. I’m kinda hungry. I think I’ll go get a croissant.

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