Did you ever have moments at a job when you feel totally out of your depth? Overwhelmed? Like at any moment someone is going to reveal you for the poser and phony that you secretly fear yourself to be? I've felt like that at pretty much every "real" job I've had since college. Maybe that's all that life is -- faking it so you fool everyone else, including yourself.

Or maybe it's just me. At least at my current job, after almost 2 months there, I've reached a good comfort level where I'm challenged but not feeling like I'm going under at any minute.

The weekdays are starting to blur together now -- the Day Job is keeping me really busy, to the point where I start looking at the clock and stressing that 5 o'clock's coming, as opposed to wanting the quittin' time to arrive. Weird.

I have been able to do some research here and there on the baseball novel. Thanks to Amazon.com's Search Inside the Book (and steal info from authors) feature, I was able to get some great info on some of my possible players/characters for the book. Part of me (the same part that feels a tiny tug of guilt when I use the copier at work to copy stuff from research books) feels bad for not paying for the books I'm pulling info from, but I try to look at this sort of research as just like going to the library. I don't pay for nothin' there, either.

Maybe I don't feel all that bad about it because the books I've been searching at Amazon are non-fiction. If they were fiction, maybe I'd feel worse...

I tell you, typing without the use of my right forefinger, which I gashed on a cutting tool/slicing gadget in our kitchen cabinet this morning, is a real pain in the ass. And I keep looking like I'm pointing at something on the screen: "Look at that!"

No real novel-revising progress to report -- I've been staying up too late the past few nights for the Oscars and Tar Heel basketball to feel like hauling my butt out of bed at a quarter to five. Maybe tonight I'll get some sleep... Yeah, right. I've got a good novel to read (Carter Beats the Devil is getting good) and after a busy day at the old salt mines, it's hard to wind down. Though my lovely wife did hook me up with a bottle of cheap Scotch, of which I've been partaking every now and then. Tasty. Later!