In case you’ve ever wondered, “So, what happens when you’re biking along and a car creates a small pothole and sends little chunks of asphalt everywhere?”

I can now say: You hear the bang, and half a second later you feel an intense pain in your thigh. You pull over for a second, say, “OW, what the FUCK?” and stare at your thigh, and see a little red circle about the size of a dime where the chunk hit you.

The red circle will turn into an angry red welt, but the pain at least goes away after five minutes or so (or at least it does if you continue biking). However, as my dad pointed out: Better that it hit me in the thigh than in the face.

I am a terrible cleaner. I keep my kitchen completely spotless because I spent some time living with people who let food fester and attract pests, but otherwise, my place generally veers between “hit by a tornado” and “aftermath of a car bomb.”

Having been unemployed and stuck at home long enough, however, I’ve finally gotten to the point where I feel like it ought to be addressed. And I’m getting pretty far down on the list of other projects that need to be done.

Hauling about four bags of crap to the trash and sticking another box in my car to go to Goodwill after just hitting the living room and bedroom at a moderate level today felt like progress. There are now several more square feet of visible floor than there were this morning.

The problem is, that’s just what I had to do to get the place clean enough that I would be comfortable actually having a cleaning professional come in and clean everything else. Sadly, I splurged on something else (that I’ll write about once it’s up and running), so my time vs. money ratio tells me it’s all on me to clean.

It’s a definite multi-day task. The bathroom alone is probably going to take me a goodly chunk of tomorrow, and there’s a filing nightmare that awaits me in about a year’s worth of paperwork that’s currently sitting in a gigantic pile on my chair, telling me that I need to switch more of my bills to e-bills.

But hey, it’s something to do. And when I’ve reached the point where I’m so bored that I’m resorting to cleaning to have something to do, it is officially time for me to get a job.

I am tired of a few things right about now:

• unemployment
• being worried about my cat being sick
• my cat actually being sick
• my wireless router constantly flaking on me
• falling back into my natural sleep pattern of 2am-9am
• having to adjust to my new orthotics
• having to get out of the pool while I still have a ton of energy because there’s a line
• being so stressed I still have a ton of energy after swimming 2.5km
• not having a job
• the fact that I’m grinding my teeth when I’m awake now
• my unemployment check being late
• the entire female reproductive process and all the joy it entails
• the four walls of my apartment
• little earthquakes causing petrifying fear of bigger ones
• having to constantly rejigger the numbers of when, exactly, I’m going to go broke
• the continuing need for physical therapy exercises on my bad foot.
• needing a goddamn job.

Some of these won’t be changing any time soon, but the current combination is quickly turning me into a complete fucking crazy person.

That was definitely the most intense earthquake I’ve felt – a 5.0 in Inglewood, lasting quite a bit longer than the last few little wobbles we’ve had.

It lasted juuuust long enough for me to be worried it was the beginning of a larger quake. People closer to the epicenter had stuff knocked off their shelves, but it didn’t even knock out my wireless internet, which has been incredibly finicky lately.

Chaplin was duly unimpressed, sleeping through the entire incident. I will probably be jumpy every time someone so much as slams a door for the next few days.

I really need to remember when I’m not working that I need to adjust my caffeine orders on the rare occasion when I go to Starbucks.

I was tired and going to a movie that I defintiely needed to stay awake through, so I stopped by Starbucks and ordered my standard drink: A triple grande skim mocha.

The problem is, usually when I’m tired enough to break down and buy Starbucks, it’s the Friday of a 70 hour week with no end in sight, I’ve been chugging minimum 3 diet cokes a day, and I’m just desperately trying to stay awake.

This time, I hadn’t had anything caffienated in days, so to hit my body with that much caffeine after having none was probably an unwise choice. I’ve been feeling weird and fucked up since I got out of the movie.

I’ll be lucky if I can get to sleep before 3am.

I got tossed a research project, which is very good for the pocketbook but not so good for having time to do much else. So instead, it’s time for a little shameless bragging in photographic form.

Left: January 27, 2007, about three weeks before I finally snapped and decided to do something about my weight.

Right: April 29, 2009.

Ladies and gentlemen: The power of “eat less, exercise more.”

I get a little listing of all the movies in development and/or about to go into production, which I use to cold-call and beg people for jobs. Occasionally I see a title so goofy that I think, “That can’t possibly be real.”

Or at least I do until I see a story in the trades that confirms that no, they really are making a movie called Hot Tub Time Machine.