Confusion reigned in the afternoon. On the positive side, I managed to squirm my way into an onsite class that had started in the morning, and it was for some cool stuff that I needed to learn. The confusion came from the cancellation of Monday's trip that I'd been supposed to be making to our headquarters in the south. Now, I'll be going the following Monday instead, and again, one more time in November. This means I'll have to reschedule the Java class I was supposed to be taking at Sun the week after next. These people need to get their act together.

After work, I headed home to get changed and get ready for the gym. The cloudscape was a strange one - heavy, textured clouds in a grey sky. Suddenly, there was a flash of what seemed like lightening. The idea of having lightening in San Francisco in September is equivalent to having snow in New York in June - pretty outlandish. I assumed that I'd imagined it. But when I headed off in my jeep, there was an enormous banging roll of thunder. Suddenly, large drops of rain began to fall on me, in my open jeep. This was truly bizarre - rain in September - we just don't get that here.

In the Castro, still amazed at the thunder and lightening show

After a great workout with Cecilia, I met my friend James at Pasta Pomodoro for dinner. I hadn't seen him since I quit Barra, my old company, at the end of June, so we had a lot of catching up to do. James has such a positive energy that he's always a joy to be with.

One of the things we talked about is my living situation. I'm seriously thinking that if I move this time, I'll try to buy a condo. Not that I'm sure I can afford it, in San Francisco's market! But James knows a lot about this kind of thing - he's a whizz with money, so I plan on picking up some ideas from him.

San Francisco, Wednesday, 8th September 1999, 9.57 a.m. PST.

I felt a bit guilty getting into work today at 10.00 a.m. But I needn't have bothered - I had five whole emails waiting for me; all of them but one were junk-mail, and the remaining one was from my boss itemizing the mistakes I'd made in the expense reports I'd submitted yesterday. I've already answered that email and have nothing official left to do. Another day of reading and make-work, I suppose.

On Monday morning, I got up early, and didn't feel too tired, considering I'd spent the previous day travelling and hadn't gotten to bed until Midnight. It was a sparkling blue San Francisco day. John and I played tennis on the roof of the San Francisco Tennis Club, just three blocks from my apartment. It's quite a ritzy place, with beautiful courts. But after an hour of this, my jetlag started to catch up with me, so we called it quits.

Around six, I met Stephen, one of my oldest San Francisco friends, at the AMC 1000 movie theater on Van Ness. The building used to be a very large Cadillac dealership, and it's been converted into a large and anonymously comfortable multiplex. Stephen is a man of around 60, with sharply etched and somewhat charismatic features and piercing eyes. He's very outgoing, and has had a full life - he knows probably thousands of people socially. Right now he's going through some tough times, though, and, after the movie ("American Pie" - a great piece of fun), we went for dinner at Max's next door and chatted about how things are going.

I don't really feel as if my advice is worth too much right now, though. I certainly can't claim that my life is in order. In fact, since coming back from D.C. I've been in a bit of a funk, largely just on account of the boredom of my job and the discomfort of my living situation, where I'm living on top of a screaming and yelling trailer-park family of six. I'm beginning to realize, with a horrible sinking feeling, that I'm going to have to move yet again! And since I'm travelling so much, I don't even have the time to start thinking about it.

On Tuesday, I returned to my office, for the first time in over a week, and spent most of the day compiling my expense reports from my two most recent trips. I've recently renewed contact with a guy I dated briefly a few weeks ago, called Hector. At the time, I'd been disillusioned with him since it had seemed like he'd flaked on me. Well it turns out that he had good reasons for not returning my calls. I'm going to give it a try because fundamentally I like him, but the very reasons for which he hadn't felt able to return my calls, make me question whether anything will come of it. So I'm keeping my eyes open and my detectors at maximum gain. In any event, just before lunch, I walked over, on a happy-go-lucky whim, to the store where he works, to see if he was in yet. It turned out that he wasn't, but I gave him a call and we made plans to see a movie on Thursday.