It’s Day 2 of Enforced Leisure (or D2EL). Made my morning perusal of all the job sites and found nothing. Ah well. At least I inquired about one job yesterday. The only discouraging thing is that I’ve yet to receive a response from any of these inquiries. I soldier on.

Mom and Dad gave me an almost absurdly large check for my birthday. So that’s something to live on if I have to. I chickened out and didn’t tell anyone over Labor Day that I quit the coffeehouse. I wasn’t in the mood for all the questions, the parental panic and anxiety. I suppose if things get down to the wire then I’ll tell them. Otherwise I’m waiting till I have something new lined up.

Last night I met Steven after he got off work and checked out his new apartment. He moved to Lincoln Square over the weekend. Looks like he’s about halfway unpacked. It’s a nice, cozy place; a one-bedroom. He has a screened-in front porch which overlooks the street; there are trees everywhere in the front yard and so when you look outside it almost seems like you’re in the middle of some forest. Very nice. Keeps the front part of the apartment rather shady. His bedroom window gets the light from the setting sun.

I think it’s a swell apartment, and the neighborhood isn’t bad either. Two drawbacks are lack of a closeby grocery store and lack of a closeby video store. I guess for me, if I can’t eat or watch movies with comparative ease, it’s like being in the sticks.

I told Steven that the scary thing is that so far I have little anxiety about being jobless. He said it was a good thing and that I should just enjoy it for the moment, which I shall. Hopefully I can spend at least a little part of each day writing & being creative in some way. I can make a list of things about publishing my book that need to be done. Send some things out to journals. Catch up on reading.

We had a bite to eat at Costello’s and browsed at Laurie’s Planet of Sound. Had some tea back at his place. He was clearly pretty worn out by 10 o’clock so I said goodnight. He seems happy to be in a place that’s all his own. This change of scenery should spur on some changes that he wants to make. The Tuesday night film series at the Film Center has resumed and we talked about making that a weekly thing again. I forgot to ask if he has plans for his birthday yet.

Andy has today and tomorrow off. So far this morning we had coffee and donuts out on the back porch and he gave me the latest installment in the Barnes & Noble Bookstore Drama. Yucky. Now we’re both just hemming and hawing around the apartment. It’s a wonderful day out there. What could we do that would be free? It’s about time for a shower.