Last chance to enter.

The judges will convene at midnight tonight, PST. Get in your guesses about my hotel bill's bottom line in the comments section here.

And now I'm in LA. Mysteriously, it's colder than Santa Cruz. Santa Monica is sort of like the airlock before my return to New York: more cars, more energy, more people to talk to (all of the Moskoses are convened--or will be, when Peter arrives later today) and, luckily for Peter, more non-white people who don't ask you if you need help. If I'd had to fly straight from Santa Cruz to NYC, I think the culture shock would've been too extreme, and I would've had to double up on my anti-arrhythmia drugs.

Which reminds me, for all you pharmaceutical watchers, the Vicodin stash remains untouched but I'm back on the amiodorone, the drug that keeps my heart rate steady and makes things taste funny. (It also can turn your skin bluish-gray, and I've been noticing that on my legs. Creepy.) I was sitting in bed one morning last weekeend, minding my own business, when my heart suddenly went patpatpatpatpatpatpatpat for about five seconds, then went back to its usual drill. I'm jumpy about a lot of aches and pains right now, but that was pretty clear-cut: it was not supposed to be happening. It also made me realize that some feelings of "boy, is my heart rate fast, but I guess I was just up walking around the living room" from the week before might've been related.

Apparently it's a relatively normal thing to have happen, though, and now I have something in common with that poor lawyer guy in Texas, whom Cheney shot in the face.