The racket of our neighbors moving in continued late into the night. Two husky women about our age, artists. Downstairs, alongside their front door, their street-side wall is a working garage door. Every few minutes, someone would drive up with stuff to unload and it would open. We could hear it grinding up slowly and majestically like a drawbridge.

This morning I somehow set the time ahead. Tim and I started off for work at 7:30, took a look at the clock on the Chronicle Building, and drove back home. We left again at 8:30. I managed to spill moussaka all over the car.

Charlie was gone when I got to work. When Shelly returned from the airport she told me he had said I could either work on the Dbase or type Fritz’s manuscript. Naturally I chose the manuscript.

While I was typing I listened to the news on the radio. First, they announced troops were being sent to the Honduras – then they said they weren’t. Then they said they were. Then, tonight, there was a press conference, and it was official. Such bullshit! A last ditch effort to either start a war or get more funding for the contras.

They’re still getting used to the apartment downstairs. At one point this evening the lights flickered, there was a bright flash and a heavy thud from downstairs. I started to hurry down, but heard one of them laugh and say, “Oh my God! Can you believe it? I don’t believe it!” From this I gathered that neither of them were lying unconscious and electrocuted, so I went back upstairs. The lights are still on.

I got a cancellation notice for my insurance today. Have to call my insurance agent tomorrow to ask him if I’ll have to reapply.

I didn’t. It was fine.

This was back in the day when you could have a face-to-face relationship with your health insurance agent. Mine was an amiable, gray haired man with a moustache whose office was on Shattuck in Berkeley. I liked him, but in the United States, especially back then, every conversation with a health insurance agent was slightly fraught and could include biting one’s tongue. I remember him explaining that the catastrophic health insurance plan I was on had to be discontinuted (and shifted to a much more expensive premium) because of the AIDS epidemic. “A client caught it, and by the time he died, we’d had to pay for EVERYTHING!” he said, his voice hushed with shock.

Which I had assumed was what health insurance was for, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to say so.