I've been continuing with the cleaning of my apartment...it goes slowly, but I'm making progress...but it is very, very dusty...

I found the manuscript of a screenplay I had forgotten I'd written...yes, I'm doing the kind of cleaning that is akin to an expedition in "personal archeology"...and I've been giving away videotapes I don't need anymore (because I have DVDs of those same movies now)...and magazines I won't be re-reading in the next century or so...

For the last few days, my freelance work has kept me from my cleaning and packing...and it looks as if I won't get back to it until the weekend. Yes, one must work for a living...

For the last two years I've been grumbling on this blog about tightening finances preventing me from having much leisure-time fun anymore in the tittie bars...and it seems like this has become the situation for a lot of people lately in our flattening economy...less dough for recreation.

I felt proud of myself yesterday for finding a cheap dinner at a food stand in Penn Station: $3.75 for two hot dogs with mustard and kraut, and a 16 oz. beer...

Then I was amazed to see that the same place offers a breakfast of two eggs, toast and potatoes for 99 cents! Almost makes me sorry I don't work down by Penn Station to take advantage of that deal...

After hours of packing and dusting and cleaning last weekend, I treated myself to a visit to the stripclub, where I saw my dancer fave Lily...it was fun, and of course I told myself that "you only live once," but I could have used that money for other things...but I have to have fun once in awhile, yes or no? You're nodding, right?

Lily asked when I'd be back, and I said, "In two or three weeks." If I'm lucky enough to afford it...now I have to start paying back the loan I took out to pay my taxes as a self-employed freelancer...rolling the stone up the hill once again.

But it was nice to see Lily...she seems to have a good attitude about life in general..and she's very simpatico to me as a customer. Whether it's all acting or not, she makes me feel at home...and what if it is acting? I don't worry about whether a movie star personally likes me when he or she makes a film...all I want to do is feel the effects of his or her performance. And maybe that's all one can rightly expect from the entertainers we call "exotic dancers."

I got news this week about an acquaintance of mine who has developed some serious health problems. Somebody I've known for a long time; not a close friend, but somebody I like and shoot the breeze with regularly. I hope he gets better soon. Ah, I can see we're moving into that treacherous gray zone of middle age...

And I think I'm going to need make room in my budget for more trips to the stripclub for occasional relief from the murk and fog of that gray zone.