This could be the very minute I'm aware that I'm alive

Sally: "I'm difficult."
Harry: "You're challenging."
Sally: "I'm too structured, I'm completely closed off."
Harry: "But in a good way."

Here is a truth about me that will surprise absolutely no one: I, much like Sally, am too structured and completely closed off. I've been considering this lately as the summer comes to an end because I'm approaching a huge crossroads in my life: I have three months of school left until I'm shot out into the real world, and absolutely no solid plans for what comes after.

At the beginning of the summer I was involved in a semi-relationship that ended because I am too structured and completely closed off. At my internship, several people encouraged me to take some time off for "fun stuff" until I get a real job, an idea that makes me shudder because...I am too structured and completely closed off.

Not that I think there's anything inherently wrong about being too structured and completely closed off. Al Gore is pretty structured and closed off, and maybe if he were president we wouldn't have invaded Iraq. The majority of my friends are not very structured or closed off at all, but someone has to be the practical one, right? So I'm torn between thinking that this is something about myself that I should strive to change and between thinking that this is just the way I am and I and everyone else should accept it.

But deep down inside of me -- very, very deep down -- lurks the heart of an adventurer. I went skydiving, didn't I? So when I sit at my computer browsing all these mind-numbing job listings, sometimes my mouse strays and I find myself looking for information on how to get a teaching job in Hawaii. I think: Why shouldn't I teach in Hawaii for a few years? Why shouldn't I take off on an adventure?

Well, because I'm too structured and completely closed off, for one thing. For another, it's possible that this wanderlust is just distracting me because I can't admit to myself that what I really want is to live in New York, join the Road Runners and have a boring, steady job. I think I need my adventure in structured doses, like if I went on a trip and somewhere on the schedule was: Adventure! Maybe we're not all destined for spontaneity and excitement. After all, in the (very, very) end, Sally's life turned out pretty good.

OK, now that all that introspection is out of the way, we can get to the down and dirty business of random things I want to share:

On Saturday at Macy's, the cashier checked to make sure I was 18 before asking me if I wanted to open a Macy's credit card. Then yesterday at the R-rated movie The Descent (a horror film I actually recommend!), I got carded. I started to laugh as I handed over my driver's license, and the teller took one look at it and said, "Oh!" If you have to be 17 to see an R-rated movie, and the teller needs to check your ID, does that mean she thinks you look 16? If so, that would mean I got aged down seven years. A new record!

Secondly, I have gone a little crazy this summer installing all things Google. Google calendar, Google home page, Google Talk (the AIM wave of the future!) and now Google Desktop, the greatest thing ever. There's a little sidebar on my desktop that displays my e-mail, news, weather and best of all, a random slideshow of pictures from my computer. It just showed me Dena doing tae kwan do at the BaRuCH coffeehouse at Chum's followed by a picture one of my first-graders drew followed by me making a funny face during Fleet Week. Fun! Google is the wave of the future.