674 days, 9 hours, 23 minutes, 5 seconds

Jennifer Mee's hiccups are back! This fifteen-year-old from Florida hiccuped for five weeks straight. Then a few sporadic bouts. But two days back at school, then a nosebleed, then the hiccups started as bad as ever. She can't stop reading news about this story. When she was fifteen, the best she could do to get out of school was fake a nervous breakdown.

675 days, 12 hours, 9 minutes, 30 seconds

As she rises from bed, her mind still foggy, white fog outside the window, her glasses still on the desk across the room, the tan top of one water tower on a building a few streets away appears to be a breast, with a nipple.

675 days, 12 hours, 24 minutes, 25.3 seconds

Now she's wondering if even two glucophage are going to be enough. Her blood still high. Her body still wanting. More more more more – like some toddler. It was 68 degrees out Wednesday. This is Friday and she wakes to snow. Snow and freezing rain to continue into tomorrow. More, more, more, more. She doesn't get a break.

677 days, 0 hours, 40 minutes, 24 seconds

Hearing that last entry read aloud at the workshop, Emily comments that, of course, with Bush, the odd or even numbers won't make any difference, he'd never be able to add, subtract, or divide them.

677 days, 5 hours, 39 minutes, 21 seconds

Not a number in that whole batch that can be evenly divided. Sort of like playing with marbles as a child, one for you, one for me, one for you, one for me, then the odd cat's eye standing there unblinking. Her brothers, if she'd had brothers, would probably have done the same with little lead soldiers. And she supposes some boys wanted them all for themselves, throwing a soldier with rifle on shoulder down the sink in a tantrum, clogging the whole drain, and just not caring.

677 days, 10 hours, 14 minutes, 16.2 seconds

Me moriré en París con aguacero,
un dia del cual tengo ya el recuerdo.
Me moriré en París—y no me corro—
tal vez un jueves, como es hoy, de otoño.

(Cesar Vallejo, "Piedra negra sobre una piedra blanca")

677 days, 10 hours, 53 minutes, 51 seconds

And she has 660,052,431 seconds left to live. If you believe the Death Clock, the Internet's friendly reminder that life is slipping away... second by second. She filled in her age, height, weight, said she isn't a smoker, isn't depressed, optimistic, or pessimistic. Now it tells her she'll die on February 13, 2028. The day before Valentine's Day. February's always been the bleakest month for her. Just when she's searching for a way to put this clock in her taskbar, remind her of all the time she's wasting aimlessly surfing or playing solitaire, she sees a link to delay the date of your death. It takes her to some stupid health clock, with information about cholesterol (she already takes zocor), diabetes (she's now on glucophage), breast cancer (which she's had once in each breast), HIV, lymphoma, lung cancer, etc. Now the death clock's gone from the screen. She fills it all out again. 660, 051, 700. February 13, 2028, will be a Sunday.

679 days, 8 hours, 14 minutes, 43 seconds

She wonders how many days, hours, minutes until she buys a new computer. Which is absolutely ridiculous. This 15.4" Fujitsu with such a great screen that she discarded her external monitors is precisely 251 days old, under warranty for another 114 days. There's nothing wrong with it, except for the generic port replicator that screwed up her sound system. Except for programs she's installed then discarded, leaving stray dll files around. Except for the fact that it boots but sometimes has problems loading its usual deluge of memory residents. She's scaled down her startup file. She ran disk doctor and win doctor. It's worked to perfection the past few days. If need be, she'll take this one back to ground zero, take the port replicator out of the picture, and reload the programs she needs. No reason it shouldn't last another 769 days, 8 hours, and 14 minutes. Giving her something else to look forward to.

679 days, 12 hours, 5 minutes, 29 seconds

She's found it -- the home she's always wanted. No nosey neighbors staring through their windows at her blinds always closed (this was at her parents' house), no one stopping her in the elevator to ask if she's still writing, no guard logging in every visitor and every package she receives. A developer bought up everything with plans for a mall, office buildings, high rise apartments, but she refuses to budge. It will take years before all that building gets done. In the meantime she's stocked up on food and water. Unfortunately, she doesn't own this so-called villa. Unfortunately, this is in China.

679 days, 13 hours, 23 minutes, 26 seconds

9745 steps yesterday. She came that close.

680 days, 13 hours, 43 minutes, 31 seconds

Two news stories, two or three days apart: a woman driving with her daughter in the car has ulcerative colitis and passes out from dehydration just as they're nearing a restaurant parking lot. The eleven-year-old manages to grab the wheel and steer the car into a telephone pole instead of oncoming traffic. And, in the second story, a teenager gets a migraine and passes out while driving: her eight-year-old sister grabs the wheel, her seven-year-old brother grabs the emergency brake, the car comes to a halt three feet to the left of a huge, blinding tree. She prints out both stories for her scrapbook. She has ulcerative colitis. She has migraines. She has no children. She's an only child.

680 days, 21 hours, 10 minutes, 57 seconds

It's Daylight Savings time, three weeks early. One hour closer to when Bush will leave office. She's overjoyed at writing this number down. Then she realizes it will only fall back again.

This year her computer made the change seamlessly. The little clock on the bottom showed 1:59 a.m., then 3:00 a.m. She was wondering if she'd updated the proper patch. And she thinks of how many years ago now, when she and her husband both stayed up to watch, and her computer cut in (what they'd now call instant message, she supposes), saying it was about to change the time, and asking her permission. Hell, she remembers computers where she had to manually set the date each day.

3:55 a.m. Her husband wakes in the bed two feet away from her, startled to hear her typing this much, at this hour. "Are you composing?" he asks. Composing. What a strange word. And one he's never used before. Musical. But then it turns dark, as if she's trying to compose herself.

This was supposed to be a quiet keyboard. And it's wireless. Unattached.

680 days, 21 hours, 14 minutes, 34.2 seconds

Sometimes she's slow to notice things. Like that the deck of cards she's playing solitaire with (on the computer, of course), has an astronaut on the back. Considering that she's still fascinated and frightened by the Lisa Nowak story, considering that she's written about this in two poems already, is it still fair to berate herself for wasting time playing solitaire? This is only one deck among many, though. Can't draw it every time.

681 days, 10 hours, 46 minutes, 18.2 seconds

Could it be there were two teachers – two reading specialists in the New York schools relocated to the Atlanta area who are going to court this week? This one's in Long Island. Told colleagues she belonged to a coven. That her husband was in a plane crash. That her son's fingers were caught in a VCR and severed. Taught students about the Salem witch trials. The principal, a born-again Christian, had children sing Jesus Loves All the Children of the World. She was only trying to put that in perspective. Not a word about Harry Potter. And this was only six years ago. This is totally crazy, she thinks. Then she remembers George Bush is also born-again.

685 days, 8 hours, 32 minutes, 42 seconds

Her worst nightmare: she woke up this morning to a computer that wouldn't boot. It sang out its welcome, then stopped in the middle of loading resident programs. So it's turn the button off, turn it on, off, on, off the port replicator, on (it loads one program this time), a call to her husband, off, on, off, on in safe mode (there's an "administrator" user here she never saw before), off, on, off, trying to get into safe mode again she hears a strange beep. And it boots this time. She runs a few programs, then puts it back on the replicator, holds her breath until it boots. A virus scan comes up empty. She runs one-button checkup and sees some registry problems Norton can't fix. But it boots again. She works for awhile, shuts down, takes it down to Starbucks. It's after one o'clock. She works. At three o'clock the after-school crowd comes in, teenagers who sit in the back, younger kids with their mothers. She's never seen it this crowded. The noise is deafening. She plays games.

686 days, 1 hours, 6 minutes, 46 seconds

So her husband and his brother and his brother's wife will head down to Florida over Easter, visiting their father and their other brother. Traveling a lot right now, she has the perfect excuse not to join them this year. Especially now that she realizes the airfare alone is costing him nearly $500. She tried to help. She found flights on Orbitz for nearly $200 less, but he couldn't make up his mind, wanted to check other places, and by the time he got back the cheap flights were gone (it said act quickly, only one left, but he refused to believe that). His money. Don't harp on it. Don't turn into the nagging wife. Don't turn into his father.

688 days, 3 hours, 50 minutes, 17 seconds

The woman beside her on the plane back from Atlanta doesn't seem to mind when she puts her coat then her computer on the middle seat, between them. They don't speak until the plane's landed on the tarmac (early) and has to wait before it can get to the gate. The woman asks first if she lives in New York, then says she used to live here, they moved to Atlanta a year ago. Her husband's building was destroyed in 9/11. He applied for a transfer just after that, but it took until last year. She's a reading specialist. The day she found out she'd been promoted to principal was the same day her husband's transfer came through.

She's coming back for a court case, the woman says. A student she taught in middle school seven years ago became a drug addict. Now the mother's suing her – not the school, her – because she taught the class Harry Potter and that was her son's introduction to first magic, then drugs. It was all over the papers seven years ago. The statute of limitations is about to run out. So now she has to spend a week away from her eight-year-old and her two-year-old. Six former colleagues have been called in to testify (two others have since died). And of course if she's cleared of the charges she'll counter-sue.

Stay tuned.

689 days, 13 hours, 1 minutes, 39 seconds

Slightly hurt books, the table at AWP says, selling them for $5 each, no matter what the cost. No matter what the damage, she thinks, not even walking over to take a closer look. This is in Atlanta, home of a Carter museum. But it could be Paris. It could be London. It could be Washington.

695 days, 9 hours, 52 minutes, 19 seconds

A performance artist, in town from London, is crawling Manhattan streets in a suit, knee pads, George Bush mask, and a sign saying kick my ass. Just wanting New Yorkers to feel good, he says. It calls to mind a Halloween parade over a decade ago. A man in a cart was dressed as Jesse Helms and a woman walking alongside him passed out rotten tomatoes for people to throw. It was her first Halloween parade. Clinton was president. Helms was about the worst people could imagine.

695 days, 9 hours, 59 minutes, 39 seconds

It's two o'clock and, if you believe her pedometer, she's taken 695 steps so far today. Not a very auspicious start to weight loss. There have been days when she doesn't even hit the 2,000 mark, and she's never yet made it to 10,000. Sort of a lame duck poet.