Dear Diary. It is Friday morning. I check my emails in bed.

At 6am a video games testing company sent me an application test. I am looking for a new job, because my current employer has said there won't be much more work for me.

The application tests have to be done by hand. I print them. I have a week to finish them.

I resolve not to use my laptop today. I am concerned about getting a RSI. Since I started working at Babel, my left wrist clicks loudly whenever I rotate it, and I have been dropping things a lot. I also have new, strange sensations in my forearms.

But my responses to the application test could be improved with use of a laptop. I could google answers, and edit writing to perfection with a word processor. There is a "spot the difference" puzzle. (I find it absurd. I am doing a kid's spot the difference puzzle in order to get a job.) I will have to use my laptop to do it, as the printed image is too grainy to see if a potential difference is genuine or just due to shoddy printing.

Abstaining from laptop use for a day is easier said than done. The extent that my computer pervades my life is remarkable. I use my laptop for virtually everything.

I try using voice recognition software called Dragon. It's tortuously slow. The software tells me to patient, as it takes time for it to adjust to my voice, but I suspect my computer is just too slow for it. Dragon also makes frequent mistakes. I will have to buy a microphone.

I am bored. I text my friend Marion to see if she wants to do anything. It is the first time I have texted her like this. She replies that she cannot come as she is entertaining her friend from Paris, and that it is her friend's last day in Montreal.

I go to the library and pick up a reserved book. It is called People Who Eat Darkness. With nothing else to do, I find a chair and begin to read. The book is about a 21-year-old British girl who goes missing in Japan. She is later found dead. It is gripping. It is a true story. It is one of those crime books that titillate with sordid descriptions of how the victim might have died. It reminds me of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

I have been reading for too long. I am dehydrated and losing my sense of time and place. I head home. Girlfriend is on Skype. She introduces me to a friend.

I cook fries, using a recipe from another book I picked up today, a cookbook. Remarkably, the recipe works. Girlfriend congratulates me.

I continue reading People Who Eat Darkness for about two hours. It is meticulously researched. The title alone sends a shiver down my spine. But who these titular darkness-eating people are, and how exactly they eat darkness, is never explained.

Without warning, Girlfriend puts Annie Hall on. It is one of her favourite films. I intend to go do something else, but start watching the beginning. Girlfriend sleeps through most of it. I am enthralled and watch the entire thing. Woody Allen is charismatic. I like it when he breaks the fourth wall, but still talks to other characters, or when other characters interrupt his monologues. Diane Keaton is... nothing special. Girlfriend goes to bed before it ends. I go to bed soon after.