Reading:The Mother Tongue while stuck in traffic. It's really quite fascinating and I imagine, knowing me as I do, that you will be hearing a few tidbits from this book now and again. For example, the word "ruth" once meant "compassion." You've probably never heard it used that way, yet you have often heard the related term for lack of compassion: ruthless. Why did "ruth" fall out of use? Who knows? Why do we have a word for all the work that piles up for you while you're on vacation ("backlog") but no word for all the work you have to do before you go? It's all quite random. Running: The infamous Oscar pool is back for its sixth appearance. Win $50 at Amazon, probably more if you freaks keep donating like you do! Woo!

It is entirely possible that I am going to France this fall. More likely, in fact, than any of the other million times I have mentioned going.

See, my father is going to Scotland for three weeks in September to play golf with seven of his golfing cronies. My mother is not going. We were discussing this trip over the holidays and my mother pointed out that it was not exactly fair for my father to get to go gallavanting around while she stays home, so I suggested that she and I do some gallavanting of our own instead.

Other than the fact that France hates all of us right now, it seems like the right time. I'm in a job that is paying me quite well and will probably have it until June at the very least, so all I have to do is work five or six Saturdays of overtime (and, you know, actually save the resulting cash) and I'll have enough for a pretty decent vacation.

I'm actually quite excited about the prospect of taking this trip with my mom. We are very well-matched traveling companions, and without my father to nag us about spending too much time in bookstores or lingering over a meal, I think we'll have an excellent time together.

So we've started looking at packages and tours. Being 32, I was just going to get a couple of guidebooks and plan the whole thing myself, but being 64, my mother would rather do something a little more organized. I'm not opposed to a formal tour, as long as it doesn't involve walking around with a bunch of strangers following a guide with a big purple flag or something. The ones we're looking at arrange hotels and transportation and offer one or two meals a day. Otherwise, you do what you want. They do seem to be a bit more expensive than what I was planning to spend, but I suppose that by going with my mother, the idea of wandering the French countryside with a backpack and a loaf of French bread has gone out the fenêtre.

Either way, I'm excited. I've been here before, though, so I won't really believe I'm going until I have a plane ticket in my hand. And I'll figure out how to say "Bush sucks" in French, and maybe wear it on a button so they won't spit at me or anything.

In the meantime, I just need to get through February. For one thing, work is insanely busy. As you may recall, I am working as a contract attorney at a snooty firm (one of their partners is a well-known Friend of Bill) and though they would never hire me as an associate in a million bajillion years, the work I am doing is all but indistinguishable from the work the other associates on the case are doing. So in some ways it is good, as I do feel like I'm actually working to my potential, and good references from a Snooty Firm partner or two will go a very long way when I actually get around to looking for a real job again. In other ways, it sucks, because even though I'm making better money than I have since I moved here, it's nothing near what an actual associate makes, despite the fact that I am doing the same work and expected to work the same number of hours.

Which is something I just can't do, as rehearsals on The Hound are moving into high gear. For the next two weeks we rehearse four nights a week, and for the two weeks after that, we go to three nights a week and all day Saturdays. The first week of March is tech week (known in theater circles as "hell week") and then we open on the 5th.

I think it's going pretty well. The cast seems to have jelled together and some of the actors are extraordinarily good. Perkins is coming along nicely, there are still one or two lines that are tripping me up, and I really have to work on not laughing at the end of one of my scenes, but otherwise, I'm having fun.

I still make no guarantees that either the show or I are not going to suck, however.

I was re-reading my desolate December entries the other day when I sort of had a revelation.

This Christmas was definitely no picnic, and last year's wasn't much better, and I realized that it is all my brother's fault.

See, in January 2002, he went and got himself married.

Used to be, my brother and I would both come home for Christmas, and it would be the four of us, my trusty family unit, and my brother was my Christmas buddy, like the moving buddies in Toy Story or like in school when you went on field trips and had someone you kept track of and someone who kept track of you. He and I would hang out together, do our last minute Christmas shopping together, go see movies our parents didn't really want to see together.

Then he got married. Now Christmas is the five of us, and I feel like the fifth wheel in my own family, and I think it was more upsetting to my sense of balance than I consciously realized these past two holidays.

Don't get me wrong, I love my sister-in-law more than I ever thought I would love whoever my brother married. She is sweet and kind and beautiful and clearly adores my brother, frankly beyond my understanding, and she was a most welcome addition to our family.

But she is my brother's Christmas buddy now. And I find myself buddy-less.

I remember last year, 2002, when after dinner, my parents went to their room to nap and my brother and sister-in-law went to their room to nap and I sat in the big Lazyboy in the living room and secretly cried for the lack of anyone to nap with. And I really think it had a lot to do with the sharpness of how lonely I felt this past Christmas, though I never recognized it on any kind of conscious level, even while I was home.

Things were fine when my brother wasn't married. I didn't feel like such a freak for coming home without anyone because my brother, four years older than me, was also coming home without anyone and it was totally okay for him so it was okay for me too.

Now he doesn't come home alone, but I still do.

It's not cool.

I still love my glasses, but I think it's time for contacts again.