Oh trials!  Oh tribulations!  I had hoped to leave you behind in 2010, but here you are, strewn across my path like cowflops of the devil’s own herd. 

I am searching for a roommate for my apt. *and* a tenant for an opening in my studio.  The search for a roommate is somewhere between a date and an audition.  They want to impress you with their skills and their tastes, you want them to be reasonably attractive, for some reason.  And you might make an offer and they might accept and change their minds in the hopes of finding better.  The first person to show up was Ann Veal! This, nobody needs. 

The search for someone to fill the studio is merely a matter of ensuring that the person answering the ad is not some random lunatic, but an actual artist who is also capable of paying rent.  If this sounds *less* difficult, it is not.  It is much, much harder. 

The stress of my endeavors has me ill for my third bad cold of the season.  At work I am sure they are starting to wonder if I have consumption, or the constitution of a 19th century orphan, for all the Mondays I show up at my desk fresh as a dying lily, coughing. Please sir, can I have some more jasmine tea?

I need an assistant to help me keep track of all this nonsense.  Except that I am a paid assistant.   Can I be my own assistant?  Am I settling?