Uh-oh, it looks like I'm losing Web privileges at work. The company I work at has so much data that needs to be entered that they had to stick a temp at the one computer that has Web access. That means going the whole day without being able to check e-mail. I am not happy. It's not like I'm looking for a job or anything. Or that today was not only The Water Cooler on ESPN.com or the great and wise Peter King's Monday Morning Quarterback on CNNSI.com.

Even on a normal basis, I got a bad case of obsessive/compulsion towards checking e-mail. Part of me thinks that at any moment, at any time, I'm gonna get an e-mail that will change my life. And no, I'm not talking about penis-enlargement. This, of course, never happens, but I still think it will. A boy can dream, can't he? Actually, considering what's going on in my life right now, I might actually get that e-mail as I'm currently waiting to hear back from two places with which I had really good interviews and that indicated they'd like to hire me, but are in various stages of putzing around (the place where I'd like to work- the high stress, not bad commute place- actually dangled in front of me the possibility of getting a job offer last week. Instead, I got a "you should meet with one more person" thing and haven't heard back much since then. This has every paranoid bone, nerve, and muscle in my body stomping around and yelling "how ya doin'?" at me. Besides the fact it's just dragging things out, nothing good has ever happened to your humble narrator whenever the whole thing gets held up. In fact, bad things have happened, most of which you have read about it, which makes me think the extra time is needed for them to come up with an incredibly devious and nasty way of screwing me. The worst thing is that one of the reasons they want to come in again is because I've only come in when things were relatively quiet and they want me to come in when things are all hectic and crazy. This way I can get me a picture of how hectic and crazy the place is, as if I couldn't figure out it after all the times they've told me. I know the job is stressful. I've got the idea. And you know something, I'm okay with work stress. Really. When you've been unemployed for a year, work stress is no biggie. When you have to pay your rent with a credit card and resort to not paying your bills in order to eat, work stress is a fucking vacation. Trust me on this. Oh wait, where was I?).

Anyways, so now I can't check my e-mail at work and it's driving me crazy. All I want to do is check my e-mail and see if there's anything I need to see. . With my other temp jobs, I was close enough to BART that I could get home in enough time to check my e-mail at lunch and get back to work in plenty of time, but I'm too far away from the station to do that. As a result, I sit there, typing names into the database, and the only think I can think about is all the great and wonderful (not to mention totally important) e-mails that I'm missing because I can't get online. It got so bad today that I resorted to cruising through North Beach to find a cyber-café, finally finding one at a Ben & Jerry's near Union Street. Yep, that's me, checking my e-mail in an ice-cream shop, getting my e-mail fix. Naturally, all I got was tons of spam and endless trash talking in my Fantasy Football League (of which, luckily I was not the subject of which is good considering I lost my first game, my much derided dropping of Bubba Franks is looking like an epic disaster, two of my players are injured, and my number one draft pick, Randy Moss, is a complete mess), but at least, I knew what's up.

And somehow, I see myself there tomorrow. And the next day. And the day after that.

Oy fucking vay.