Tough luck, Tom

New glasses: Check.

Clean teeth: Check.

Car falling apart so I'd probably have to get rid of it by the end of July anyway: Check.

My "return to New York" plan is coming together nicely. I've also made a few other small changes that will hopefully make me more desirable to potential NYC employers.

I switched to a fairly run-of-the-mill message on my voicemail, so I don't confuse callers with comments about fried chicken or British groceries or talking refrigerators or any of the other stuff I've used in the past (yes, my reasons for not answering my phone are usually food-related).

I've also upgraded from my hofferdoffer Hotmail e-mail address to a Gmail account with a more traditional prefix. Not only does hofferdoffer promote the chronic misspelling of my last name (it's Hofmann, not Hoffman), but I haven't seen the guy who called me that in over four years (where are you, Aaron Barth? And why didn't I get a wedding announcement?). Plus, Gchat has changed my life. Or at least made the time I spend at my job more palatable.

I've made one other recent change, not related to any job hunting, but like the previous two items it concerns how I communicate: I cancelled my MySpace account. It's been a long time since I logged onto that site, other than to delete the fake friend request/porn links I would occasionally receive. Facebook is much more fun, much safer, and I'm not too into bands, so there wasn't much reason to keep my account.

I would've actually cancelled it much sooner, but I had to stick to a commitment I made myself. Over a year ago, my profile views on MySpace skyrocketed from about 200 to about 900 in just a few weeks (no idea how this happened; I only had 30 or 40 friends on there), and since I was already thinking of leaving the site, I made plans to discontinue my account as soon as I reached 1000 profile views.

But then I went through a drought. People stopped looking at my profile (maybe they got bored of the picture of Disco Stu I was using). In May, though, I finally reached my goal, and now I can no longer be stalked on MySpace.

Speaking of stalked...here's my most memorable MySpace experience. Just under a year ago, FOX debuted a show called Don't Forget the Lyrics. A karaoke show hosted by improv legend Wayne Brady sounded like it would be right up my alley, and I was right.

The contestant on the premiere episode was a really cute, perky girl named Katie Moeser. She was absolutely adorable, and I was smitten. So the next day I did the only logical thing: I looked her up on MySpace and sent her a message telling her I enjoyed her performance on the show. Two days later, I actually got a response--just two paragraphs, but more than I expected. I then looked at her page, and saw that in the last few days she had received something like 60 wall posts (or whatever the MySpace equivalent is, I can't remember) from guys she obviously didn't know. When I sent my original message, I had felt like I had been charming and thoughtful, but after seeing all the other notes she had received I realized that even mine was a little creepy, and I didn't try contacting her again. Which was too bad--I had some great ideas on how the two of us could've spent the $250,000 she won.