The times they are a-changin. My blog, technically, is no longer accurate. You see, last week, I turned 41. Yup. 41 and cornered, working on a new chapter: Too young to be old, too old to be young. (Or whatever.)

More so than in awhile, I feel something positive is about to happen. I made the arrangements with the moving company for early January -- back here to my duplex in Dayton. No, I'm not at all happy to be leaving Cincy. But I'm doing this with an end in mind: I'll fix the place up "real cute-like", pay off debts at the same time, and be ready to sell when my new job comes along.

And my resume: I've been working on it, and C, D and my dad helped. It's looking pretty good, and it, too, is ready to fill anyone's e-mail box. I've never looked for a job in the electronic age: My present career (yukka yukka) began in 1997 by mailing in a hardcopy. Articles suggest you save it as a text file so that anyone's system can read it -- and I did that. Some folks wrinkle their noses at the monotype font format with no extras, but I feel it looks fine. In fact it even looks kind of cool.

That leaves my love life. Well, it sucks. I do my day to day stuff, and have my little hobbies so I don't become too much of a shut-in. I keep telling myself I need to embrace being single and what's so great about being coupled anyway? But that's very difficult to do. With my daydreams, I imagine "him": sitting watching a movie, laughing over chinese, sitting out back with a drink mulling over the day. I'm Doris Day, with tattoos and sideburns.

Yes, Doris Day. Gimlet in hand. Lounging about in glorious technicolor, amidst piles of clothes, books and dog hair. Mmmm, Tony, pour me another jigger of Happy, will ya? I should keep doing things on my own that I like to do. And -- *sigh* -- I suppose that even if dates are rare, I've been lucky, so to speak, when I need to be. Que sera, sera...

It had occurred to me I hadn't had a car-crash dream in a very long time -- then I have one. I was driving along fast, highway fast. I was fiddling with the CD player and when I looked up, one of those ugly Hummers was coming at me full barrel and head-on. It was lemon yellow, and my eyes or consciousness or whatever you have in dreams focused right in on the silver front grill -- H- U- M -M -E -R -- shooting at me, lightning speed.

What the hell? These must have something to do with the direction my life is taking or something, right? Maybe it's about my career and making a certain amount of money -- and whether it's worth the cost? What better dreamtool to dreamderail a dreamcareercrisis than the ultra yuppie Hummer?

As far as I'm concerned -- bring on 2004: I'm ready! Here's looking at you, Doris!