Well, I've returned to the world of the living after spending several days so far below rock bottom you would have needed sonographic imaging equipment to see me. I don't have much time to write now, so here's an excerpt of an e-mail I sent my friend Heather Titus that says it all:

"Yeah.... About the Kuwait Times..... Well..... Yeah..... I sent them my revision about a week ago and I still haven't heard back from them..... Today I finally sent them a brief, groveling e-mail asking whether or not they're "still interested." It's been pretty depressing just waiting to hear back from them. First I started questioning my abilities, but when they couldn't even send me a rejection letter I started to question my worth as a living creature. A couple nights ago I sank past rock bottom. This excerpt from an e-mail I sent to my mother says it all:

"I just ripped a loud fart in the internet cafe. I really don't care any more. I just don't care. Well, I'm going to get going. Hopefully I don't get hit by a bus on my way home; it would be an inconvenience for whoever had to clean me up and the passengers who would get delayed."

Yeah..... So that happened..... Yeah...... I've seen the dark side, Heather. I've gone down deeper than the deepest pits of depression, to the bed rock of rock bottom, danced around and now I'm trying to climb back out again."

So that happened.

But just today I got an e-mail from the editor of the Kuwait Times telling me that she's definitely going to run my article, she's just been busy with stories about Saddam's trial. Since mine wasn't time sensitive it got pushed to the back of her desk. Anyway, the long and the short of it is that she's running it!!! I'm not sure when it comes out, but she said she'll e-mail me when it's going to run. So, I can now look people in the eye and tell them I'm a professional, paid journalist!!!

In other news, last night I met a gymnast from Luxembourg who teaches PE at a German school in Jerusalem. Apparently she liked what she saw, and gave me her phone number. Yeah, so that happened. I'm going to wait several days before calling her. I figure it's best to pretend like it's not the most exciting thing that's happened to my personal life in the last four years, or perhaps ever. A gymnast from Luxembourg?!?!

In the meantime I've been working on a story about Palestinians who are politically opposed to the existance of Israeli settlments, but they work in them because they're unable to find jobs in Bethlehem. More about that later.

Anyway, I just thought I'd write something and let the one or two people who accidentally read this thing from time to time, that I'm alive and well, and life seems to have given me a break from the cycle of degradation and depression.