I just hate this.

I've got a four-day weekend fast approaching and I don't want to feel like I'm wasting it, but it's pretty much inevitable that I will feel that way once it's over.

Tomorrow I'm driving up to Cincinnati to catch a Reds game. I'll check out some bars, spend the night in a hotel, and drive back Saturday morning.

Then I've got this Survivor party to attend. For some unknown reason, I'm just not looking forward to this. I guess I've been hoping for a better offer, but none has come. So I'll go and try to enjoy myself.

Sunday is wide open. I imagine that I'll end up at Fourth Street Live.

None of this is what I really want to do this weekend.

What I really want to do is get into my truck, pick a direction, and just start driving. And keep driving until I find whatever it is I've been missing.

But some things are too far away for even a four-day weekend trip.

And some things are hidden so well that even I don't know what they are.

And some things don't even exist.

I just hate this.

(Update: Several people have reminded me that back in December I wrote this. To those people I respond that it's (a)Completely appropriate, and (b)A lot harder than it seems.)

Kind of a fucked up day for me.

I wasted yet another day of vacation because the repair guy (supposed to show up at noon) didn't get here until 7:00.

I watched Rob and Amber Get Married, tivoed when it originally aired but never watched. Brilliant move, that was. Watching people in love starting a new life together. Just fucking brilliant.

So eventually my A/C got fixed, and I went to Rich O's to celebrate.

The place was crowded as fuck. It was more like a Friday than a Tuesday. I text-messaged RealTrainGirl about the crowd but I guess she's joined the legion of women that are pissed at me after all. This made the third message in as many days that she's ignored. Or maybe she just hasn't been getting them. A lot of that going around lately. Fortunately for me there's currently only one woman on Earth that is capable of truly hurting my feelings, and it's not RealTrainGirl. I'm mostly invincible.

So I hadn't been in Rich O's for more than ten seconds when TallLady started in on me about smiling and why I wasn't doing it. I'm afraid I got a little gruff with her. I don't smile on command, and I told her so.

She apologized for offending me, but I told her that she hadn't offended me, she had annoyed me. If she had said "Smile, you pumpkinheaded fuck," then that would have offended me.

To drink, I had a Spezial Rauchbier. Very good as always.

Next I did some experimenting.

Dave's Double Chocolate Cherry Ale

(mixture) I mixed Bell's Cherry Ale and Young's Double Chocolate Stout in a 1-to-1 ratio. Just a fantastic combination. A nice deep red color. Chocolate flavor that's followed by a slightly sour finish. I'd definitely buy this if it was available commercially. Yummy.

Next I had the rest of the Young's, straight this time.

Next I had a pint of Guinness, for no reason other than its low ABV.

I stopped and saw VigilanteGirl on the way home. Her normal voice has returned. Oh well.

Tonight I missed her more than usual. I blame the television I watched earlier. Unfortunately, whenever I let my thoughts stray to topics like love, marriage, happiness, whatever, my imagination always reveals the same person standing next to me. This sucks, but I guess I'm getting used to it.

One interesting thing about tonight: I was talking with this dude about this girl that obviously had the hots for him. He didn't know it. Didn't want to believe it. My advice to him was to just go for it. To just grow a pair and take a fucking chance.

See, I can advocate bravery as long as it's not my own heart on the line.

I guess VigilanteGirl's ear infection has spread to her sinuses.

I certainly hope she feels better soon, but for now, WOW!

Her voice, softened and sultrified (yes, that's a word, now - I just made it up) by her condition, is now so sexy it makes me weak in the knees.

She doesn't think it sounds that great, but I assured her that no matter how bad it might sound inside her head, it sounds fantastic everywhere else.

I suggested that she record a new voice mail greeting to take full advantage of her sexy new voice. Her current greeting sounds nothing like her - more like her mom or her grandmother.

Of course, if she does change her greeting, it still won't sound anything like her once her normal voice returns. It will instead sound like one of those phone sex girls that advertise on late-night TV:

Please call me. I'll be waiting for you.

Her greeting could say:

Please leave me a message. I'll be sure and call you back. You sexy thing.

One of the most common traits of just about any personal 'blog is that nobody cares about 90% of the crap that gets posted. People may enjoy reading for the humor, or for the drama, but the actual content is actually unimportant to almost everyone except the actual 'blogger.

This entry is an example of something nobody cares about. Except me.

Yesterday I dug out an old pair of shorts, shorts with a 32-inch waistband.

I haven't been able to wear 32s in years. I've been wearing 34s and even some 35s.

But now, because of all this weight that's been mysteriously disappearing, I can wear 32s again. They actually fit, which is a lot more that I can say for the shorts I had been wearing. They kept threatening to fall right off my skinny ass.

I'd been looking like one of those damn kids I see all over, with my pants halfway down my ass. Hey, maybe all those kids haven't been showing stupid fashion sense after all! Maybe they all just lost a lot of weight!

So the good news for me (and for the ladies) is that I'm not a lardo anymore.

The bad news for me is that I only own one pair of pants that fit me. I threw all my other 32-inch pants away years ago. Then my sister dug them all out of the trash and put them in the garage for the mice to build condos in, but that's another story.

So now I've either got to go do some clothes shopping, or just start eating ice cream and cheetos again.

Back in January, I wrote about this time I drove from Seattle to Las Vegas.

One thing I didn't mention about that drive was what happened after 3:41 AM that Saturday morning.

So I'll write about it now.

At about 1:00 AM I was just barely into Nevada. I'd driven all day, and I was pretty tired. I'd read that Nevada laws allowed overnight parking on the side of the road, so that's what I did. I left the two-lane highway, drove a short distance down some unmarked gravel road, and pulled off onto the shoulder to get some sleep.

I was out almost immediately.

At 3:41 AM I woke up. The clock in my dashboard was just incredibly bright so I definitely knew what time it was. That clock is burned into my brain.

I stumbled out of the car to take a piss.

About halfway through my piss I guess I woke the rest of the way up or something, because I noticed.

The stars. Those stars are also burned into my brain.

I'd gone 28 years without ever really seeing the heavens. I guess most people go their whole lives without it. City lights brighten the night sky, drowning out all but the brightest stars. Air pollution puts a haze over everything. Most people don't even notice. Most people don't even question what they're missing.

I know, because I was one of those people. Until that night.

That night, that late hour, that remote location, that high altitude - all had combined to provide me with a display that was quite simply breathtaking. It still gives me goosebumps just thinking about it.

It was like the sky had decided to show off just for me. The Milky Way, shit I still can't get that image out of my head. It was like a pearlescent scarf, stretching from horizon to horizon. Easily the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.

And the colors. The night sky is not black and white. It's full of every color imaginable. You just have to see it to believe it.

On that night, at that time, beside that unnamed Nevada road, I was truly humbled for the first time. I knew then that my problems were nothing. There I was, fretting about a love that could never be, while the entire universe spread itself out before me.

I just stood there, enthralled, for hours. This was as close to a religious experience as I've ever had. I remember thinking that anything so beautiful just had to be planned. Just had to have a purpose. It was hard to accept that what I was seeing was real at all. It just couldn't be random.

When the Sun rose, and the stars dimmed, I realized that I'd been crying. For I had seen God. And He in turn had shown me myself.

Was literally on my way out the door and the repair guy finally called to tell me that he's on his way.

I certainly don't expect any actual repairs to take place tonight, but at least now he'll be able to tell me how stupid I am and how much my stupidity is going to cost me.

Just to make a long boring story short and somewhat less boring, the repair guy didn't show up today.

He was supposed to be here between 10:00 and 2:00, so I took a day of vacation to wait.

At 2:30, I called to make sure that he was really coming. They assured me that he was.

At 5:00 I called again to make sure that he was really coming. They again assured me that he was.

At 6:00 they called me to tell me that it would be at least another hour.

At 8:20 I gave up and decided to go to Rich O's to get some air conditioning.

So tomorrow I get to do it all over again. Except that this time I hope the guy actually shows up.

Oh yeah, my thermometer has been pegged at 90 degrees since about noon. It's still slightly cooler in the basement though.

I've already discussed the problem I had with my air conditioning.

I thought it was over, but nooooooooooooooooooo!

I've still been getting a lot of ice buildup. Not nearly as bad as before but still enough to annoy me, and enough to get the floor wet when it melted.

So today I went to Plan B: Cleaning the outside unit.

I removed the fan and sprayed the shit out of the thing with a hose. With all of the old grass and dirt gone it looked almost new. I reinstalled the fan and turned the A/C back on.

After about an hour, I saw that I had no ice at all. This was a good thing, and I once again figured that I'd fixed it.

But nooooooooooooooooooooo!

After another hour, I looked at the thermometer and saw that it was 87 degrees in the house. This just couldn't be. The A/C had been running nonstop for two hours.

At least the inside fan was running.

I went out to check the outside unit and saw, much to my dismay, that the fan blade had managed to neatly slice one of the wires. I'd failed to properly secure them, the fan cut the wire, and the outside unit had promptly blown a circuit breaker.

No wonder it was still hot in the house.

Desperate, apparently, to make a bad situation worse, I decided that I'd just repair the wire.

Found some electrical tape, a pair of wire strippers, and even a wire nut. I repaired the shit out of that wire.

But when I put the fan back in the wire bundle was still to close to the blades. There was this little plastic clippy thing that had broken, so there was nothing to keep the wires safely against the sides of the unit.

At about this time I got stung by a wasp.

Once I made sure that I wasn't going to die (which I'll admit would have been slightly worse), I tackled the problem of keeping the wires safe without the little plastic clippy thing. I found several garbage bag ties and used them to fasten the wires to whatever I could find inside the unit.

Better, but still not completely safe.

The very top section of wires just kept flopping out towards the fan blades, and there was nothing in that area to fasten them to. The slack that I was using so that I could remove the fan and get to the wires was also the slack that was causing all the trouble.

This is when I got my brilliant idea.

Not.

I found a very stiff piece of wire and decided that if I only had a small hole through the sheet metal at a certain point I could use the stiff wire to reach in through the hole and pull the bundle to safety and really secure the hell out of it.

I figured that I was home free.

But nooooooooooooooo!

What I did instead, despite very careful measuring and checking and double-checking, was drill a tiny hole in the damn A/C coil. Just nicked it, really.

Here's something I didn't know: Freon escaping from a tiny hole in a coil sounds exactly like a jet engine. Only louder.

Needless to say, my home repair skills (highly questionable by this point anyway) do not extend to repairing A/C coils and conjuring up new freon out of thin air. Ha ha. Freon. Thin air. Get it?

So now I get to burn a day of vacation tomorrow so the repair guys can come out to (a)tell me that I'm an idiot, and (b)repair or replace my outside coils.

So far the basement is still pretty cool. My cats have retreated there, and I may just join them tonight.

One of those damn tame and relaxing nights that have become so commonplace lately.

Rich O's was moderately empty. All the cool people at parties again I guess.

I sat on the sofa and talked with QuietDude and DooRagGirl.

To drink I stuck with mild stuff: two pints of Smithwick's and two Guinnii.

Oh yeah, NotGeorge now has a new nickname. He will henceforth be known in this 'blog as SpikeBoy.

I had this great idea to call my friend Eric and see if he and his wife wanted to come down and try some lambics, but by then it was after 10:00 and I figured that it was too late.

DooRagGirl and FutureDude may come and take my old washer/dryer. It'd be nice to get it out of my garage.

Some things I can safely ignore. I can simply pretend that they didn't happen and go on about my merry ways.

There is, of course, the problem of persistence. I can't really just keep ignoring something over and over and over. Doing that ends up sending exactly the type of message that I'm trying to avoid sending. I mean, if I ignore something so many times that it becomes obvious that I'm ignoring it, the whole point has been lost. Perhaps that moment has already passed. I don't know and I'm not about to ask.

It's kind of nice to be in charge of something for a change though. Kind of nice to have someone else doing the waiting. The wondering.

I text-messaged my sister the other night and told her that I was an asshole. When she called me back to ask why, I told her.

"It's about time!" was her response. Or something like that anyway. That was the gist.

So I'm having fun being the asshole. It's my turn, at least for a while.

Eventually, my better nature will win out, and I'll stop ignoring this. Or, more likely, I'll encounter something that I cannot ignore.

It's kind of like a race.

Pretty exciting, huh?

I don't want to go.

There's nothing forcing me there. I could just stay home tonight, the way I stayed home today despite all of my grandiose plans for a road trip to Cincinnati.

A long time ago, over two thousand miles away, I did stop going. Sure, it felt weird for a while, like I was just wasting my free time by just hanging around my home. But after a while, after a while I noticed that I didn't miss going at all. In fact, it got to where when I did go I felt like I was wasting my valuable home time by going out to be surrounded by idiots.

Back then, nobody even noticed that I wasn't going anymore. Back then I was able to quietly slip away and just not come back for a week. Or a month. Or six months.

These days, I don't have the ability to just quietly slip away. These days, people would notice. And people would think they knew why I was gone. They'd start assigning blame. They'd sit there with their knowing nods and their gossip and their "poor Dave" and they'd all feel glad that it wasn't them that was staying away. That was such a pussy.

If I didn't go tonight, people would think they knew why. They'd be wrong, but I wouldn't be there to tell them that. They'd all enjoy their gossip and maybe even get a good laugh out of everything.

I'm not going to try to bullshit myself or anyone else by saying that their opinions would be completely unfounded. It just that, to paraphrase something I read recently - They can't see the forest because they're in love with the trees. One certain tree, in fact.

So I don't want to go tonight, but I'm going anyway. I'm going to show them all that I have not been defeated.

Yet.

This guy at work was kind enough to burn every episode of Lost to DVD for me. I know that the official DVD pack of season one is due out in the Fall, but this way I don't have to wait.

The first 15 minutes of the first episode was some of the most intense television I've ever seen. Can't wait to see it, and 24 episodes of Evangeline Lilly in all her beauty, again and again.

Also, the other day on the radio they kept yakking about this show Hit Me Baby One More Time and how it was a hit. I never even heard of the show (haven't watched hardly any television in several weeks) but I was looking through my TiVo's recordings, and it had recorded three episodes for me!

What a cool show! Even though I never heard of several of the performers, I still like it. The bands that I have heard of are there too.

I can't get Greg Kihn's The Breakup Song out of my head. He's right - they don't write 'em like that any more.

Rich O's is having this event, called Belgian Lambic By The Glass II, this weekend. Pretty descriptive, albeit uncreative, name. C'mon Roger, you can do better than that! I'd suggest FunkFest 2005.

I arrived a little late. VigilanteGirl was busily trying to pick a fight at work so I had to stick around and be her bodyguard for a while.

Rich O's was pretty crowded. This had been fairly typical for Fridays, but tonight's Friday crowd was not made up of the amateurs usually seen. Tonight the place was full of PBDs.

I've never had any lambic beer. I wanted to find something funky. Something musty. Something weird. It took me a while, but I was eventually successful.

Cantillon Bruocsella 1900 Grand Cru

(bottle) Don't know what vintage this was. Incredibly sour taste. Like sucking on lemon rinds. Not musty or funky at all. Drinkable, but not noteworthy.

Drie Fonteinen Oude Geuze

(bottle, 1999 vintage) Less sour than other lambics, but much more of a dry finish. A subtle hint of funkiness in both the aroma and flavor. Pretty damn good.

Cantillon Organic Gueuze

(bottle) Funky and Musty. Very dry finish. Hard to pin down exactly what this tasted like. I liked it.

Cantillon Lou Pepe Gueuze

(bottle, 2002 vintage) Like a regular, somewhat mild, Belgian strained through dirty sweat socks. This is what I was expecting from a lambic festival! A little sour, a little drying, a lot tasty.

Hanssens Mead the Gueuze

(bottle) I kind of expected that this mead/lambic blend would be disgusting. I was right. Probably the nastiest thing that's touched my tongue in years.

I spent most of the night standing up. When I finally did grab a seat at the bar some shithead came in. I really didn't want to deal with him so I moved over to the annex area and stood while I had a Stone Smoked Porter. Yummy.

Tonight, everybody thought I was in a bad mood. They were all wrong at first, but their suspicions became self-fulfilling after a while.

They can get their *own* damn brains to eat!

What pisses you off?

Created by ptocheia

Today, I actually accomplished two things.

Not much in the grand scheme of things, to be sure, but two things nevertheless.

There have been, for quite some time now, two glaring problems with this site.

1. You couldn't select text when using the Internet Explorer browser.
2. If you made your browser very wide the text just kept on getting wider with it.

Neither of these is a problem anymore.

The first problem was quite aggravating for me. It ended up being caused by a bug in Internet Explorer that only came up when "position:absolute" was used for layer positioning. I removed all such declarations from my stylesheets and html files and the problem went away.

While I was messing with my stylesheets anyway, I assigned a maximum width to the "body" element so that there's essentially a maximum width for the site - no matter how wide you want to make your browser window. This has been something that's annoyed me for a long time, but it obviously wasn't as serious as the text selection bug.

Oh yeah, I also moved the side panel to the right side of the screen. Looks pretty different over there, doesn't it?

Backwoods Brown Ale

(bottle) Given to me by a homebrewing friend. No description or name given, it was all up to me. Pours a nice amber/honey color with lots of foam. The aroma is very sweet - almost too sweet - and that sweetness is quite evident in the taste as well. A good brown ale, but perhaps a little too cloying for me to ever spend an evening drinking it. Much better, of course, than anything I've ever made.

Okay, here's the latest from Free Will Astrology:

I've known more than a few people who have slept with things they consider power objects: a teenager who liked to cuddle with the trophy he won for bowling a perfect game, for example, and a macho dude who was never without his stuffed turtle from childhood, and a woman who worshiped a special rock she had been sitting next to when she had the revelation that changed her life. I mention these precedents, Pisces, in the hope that it will help you feel utterly uninhibited about going to bed with a certain good luck charm or mojo-drenched fetish. I assure you there will be some magic in doing so.

So, if I understand this correctly, I'm supposed to (a) pick a favorite object, then (b) sleep with it.

Since my favorite object would probably have to be my pool cue, I'm more than a little hesitant to follow this advice.

The mechanics of me taking a long and hard object to bed just don't seem very appealing to me.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. It's just not for me.

Got a couple more trips coming up for work.

In early August I'll be going to Chicago for a few days, then the next week I'll be in Boston for two nights.

Looking forward to the Boston trip much more than the Chicago one. Nothing against Chicago though - it just doesn't seem like it'll be as much fun. I could be wrong though. I guess we'll be taking in a White Sox game. That'll be cool.

In Boston we'll be going to a Red Sox game. Going to Fenway Park is something I've wanted to do for a long time.

And sometime this Summer there's the possibility of a short trip to Philadelphia.

My insomnia is coming back. Yippie!

Inspiration is a funny thing. When I look for it, it's nowhere to be found.

Inspiration? Let's see, inspiration. Nope, don't think I've seen anything like that 'round these parts for quite a spell.

When I'm not looking for it, it sets up camp inside my skull, just behind my slowly expanding forehead, and begins pounding on drums while its companions, creativity and imagination, dance furiously to the jungle beat.

Right now, for example, inspiration is nothing but a faint memory.

I want to write something about something.

I want to write about natives living on a volcanic island.

When that volcano starts to rumble, and they know that they're going to die, do you suppose that some of them just wish it'd hurry up and erupt already?

Not because they're anxious to die, but because they just want to get it the fuck over with. So they can stop trembling with every belch of smoke or vibration of the earth. So they can stop wondering Is this it? Is this the end?

Living in fear is no way to live.

I've known for several weeks now that something horrible is going to happen to me.

Somewhere in the depths of space, a chunk of rock has been diverted from its orbit. It's begun a long slow spiral inward that will eventually cause it to land right on top of me.

There's no escape for me. I know that even if I should somehow survive the impact, I won't be the same. I'll have to rebuild myself. Again.

I don't know when this is going to happen. I'm certainly not looking forward to it. But a part of me, realizing the inevitability of it all, a part of me really wants to just get it the fuck over with.

Got this in my email today:

Hello, this is Ticketmaster Customer Service with an important alert for your upcoming event. Kelly Clarkson, scheduled at The Louisville Gardens on Wednesday, August 24th, 2005 at 8:00pm, has been cancelled.

Your credit card will automatically be credited the ticket price and convenience charges, and should post to your account within 7 to 10 days. Please note, the $4.35 per order processing fee and any TicketFast or UPS delivery charges are non-refundable.

I don't know why this event was cancelled, but I bet it has something to do with all of the women being pissed at me on Friday.

That THUD THUD THUD sound everyone keeps hearing is the sound of my readers dropping dead from boredom.

There's not a lot that I seem to be able to do about it, except apologize. Again.

I do have a question though.

Why is it, do you suppose, that I keep returning to the scene of the crime even though I know that it's certainly haunted?

There is nothing there for me except uneasiness and fear, yet I still return every chance I get. The place manages to attract and repel me at the same time. It's almost like I can't really believe what happened there. What I did there. Maybe, I seem to think, if I pretend that it didn't happen then it will somehow magically become undone.

It's like I expect that, one of these days, I'll go back and see that everything is back to normal. That the ghost of my victim doesn't lurk behind every corner, crouch in every dark shadow. That it's all been in my head - some feverish nightmare, easily countered with a couple of aspirin.

In the movies, the people that stay in the haunted castle usually end up being victims themselves.

I are so smart!

It turns out that I had two problems that were causing water to get all over my basement floor.

The first problem I already wrote about. That seems to have been taken care of by a simple filter cleaning.

The second problem was much more sneaky. And when I say that it was sneaky what I really mean is that I'm retarded.

Even though I had no more water around my air handler, the water in the restroom seemed, if anything, to be getting worse.

In the closet off the restroom is where my water heater and water softener are located. It's also where the drain is for the entire basement. It's one of those little holey things in the floor that I guess ties in with some pipe that goes to the septic tank or something. I'd take a picture but it's kind of gross.

Well to make an incredibly boring story mercifully short I have drain lines from my air handler and from my water softener that I keep crammed into these holes.

The lines from the water softener had somehow been pulled loose, and were just laying on the floor.

So I've reinserted these lines into their holes and now hopefully my wetness problem is cured.

Saturday was pretty boring. I didn't know anyone at Rich O's so I just sat at the bar all night.

I had a pint of the Bells Cherry Ale that I'd discovered last night, then I ordered a Mad Bitch. The bartender screwed up and accidentally poured me something I hadn't had before:

Poperings Hommelbier

(draft) I see all these descriptions about sharp and hoppy and peppery - I got none of that. What I got was a pale beer with a huge head that didn't have much of anything in the way of aroma or flavor. What there was, however, was quite good. At 7.5%, this beer is a lot stronger than it tastes or smells.

Once that was gone I had a Mad Bitch for real. Yummy as always.

I also had a pretty good idea - one that I should have thought of months ago.

I deleted her number from my cell phone's memory.

I did this for two reasons:

1. Every time I scrolled past her name it made me a little sad.
2. Without that number stored in the phone I no longer have to rely on my own fleeting willpower to keep me from making a bad situation worse.

Okay, this makes perfect sense.

Not.

I can fly from Louisville to Cincinnati, then from Cincinnati to Cleveland, and return home with another stop in Cincinnati, for $201.30.

Alternatively, I can just drive to Cincinnati and take the same flights between Cincinnati and Cleveland, then drive back to Louisville, for $237.40.

So essentially the flights between Louisville and Cincinnati are not only cheap, they will actually pay me $36 to fly on them.

No wonder Delta is having financial troubles.

Other than that recurring theme, it was fine.

We went to Buckhead's in Jeffersonville.

I had a blackened sirloin that, once I removed the eight pounds of onions it was buried in, was excellent. The fries there still suck though, and I should have remembered that and had a baked potato instead.

I also had a BBC beer that may be new. It was new to me at least:

Bluegrass Nut Brown Ale

(draft) Almost identical to Fat Tire ale. In other words, very drinkable. More of a session beer than anything else. I recommend this highly.

After lunch I went to give VigilanteGirl her Hard Rock shirt. Whatever had crawled up her butt last night seems to have gone away for she was not sniping at me today. We have half-ass plans to meet up at this bar in New Albany later, but history has shown that these little planlings never materialize into anything.

What a fucked up night.

As far as I've been able to determine, every heterosexual woman on Earth that is not a sister of mine is pissed at me.

That's quite an accomplishment, especially since I have no idea what the hell I've managed to screw up this time.

At first, I thought it was every woman in the world, but then I remembered that I'd talked to each of my sisters and they didn't seem pissed. Then I got a call from RealTrainGirl, so the lesbian community didn't seem to have a problem with me.

I don't know what the hell was going on, but I got evil text messages or dirty looks from every other woman I interacted with tonight. LibertyGirl and DooRagGirl tried to pretend that they weren't in on whatever it was, but I wasn't fooled.

To start the night, I had a Spezial Rauchbier. Very good, as always.

Next, I had a sample of this Bells Cherry Ale stuff. My first impression wasn't too good, but it grew on me very quickly.

Bells Cherry Ale

(draft) No aroma whatsoever. The first couple of sips reminded me more of cranberries than cherries. About halfway through the glass I decided that it wasn't too bad and ordered another pint. A little sour, a little sweet. Really quite drinkable though.

After that I felt a little reckless so I did an experiment:

Dave's Cherry Porter

(mixture) I mixed 1/2 Bells Cherry Ale with 1/2 BBC Dark Star Porter, and ended up with something greater than the sum of its parts. The too bitter porter balanced very nicely with the too sweet/sour Bells, and it was just excellent. I, apparently, am a frickin' genius.

Now I'm back at home. I think I should probably shoot a text message off to a couple of girls that are pissed at me, but I'm not going to until/unless I find out what it is I'm supposed to be sorry for.

I don't understand the female species at all.

I'm back home now.

I have nothing else to say.

Maybe later.

I don't know why, but about halfway to the Hard Rock tonight I had a realization. I realized that it was one year ago (not exactly 365 days but during the same conference this time last year) that everything started to go to shit.

Before one year ago, I had a friendship that could have lasted the rest of my life.

But nooooooooooooooooo!

Part of me (rhymes with fart) decided that it wasn't going to be satisifed with just a friendship. Part of me decided that it had been left to atrophy for far too long, so it teamed up with another part of me (rhymes with lock) and staged a little mutiny against my brain.

So now a year has passed since things started, nine months have passed since everything I used to be was destoyed during the mutiny, and two months have passed since I finally allowed myself to acknowledge what it was that I'd gotten myself into. I wrote about how stupid I was, once it had finally sunk in that I'd destroyed a sure thing for a pipe dream.

But this entry is about tonight, and tonight I'm not in any particular mood at all. Maybe a little pissed at myself, but that's it, and that's certainly something I'm used to. Kind of strange to be thinking about missing her and not getting sad about it. I send text messages to my friends back home and I wish I could divert them Westward. But I can't. Or won't. Or shouldn't. I don't fucking know.

Anyway, tonight I went to the Hard Rock to get some t-shirts and eat dinner. I took pics.

This is pretty famous I guess. It spins around.

A fairly big - and fancy - Hard Rock. This was to be expected I guess.

This car was spinning around above my head. It was pretty cool.

With my dinner at the Hard Rock the bartender made a big production out of how good he was at pouring a proper Guinness. I guess he did well (he drew the clover and everything) but the spell was definitely broken when, for my second pint, he poured it into a frosted glass.

When I left the City Walk area I stopped at the Ale House and had, as I've done every night this week, a couple pints of Newcastle.

Tomorrow I go home. I looking forward to it I guess, but not that much. My ambivalence isn't caused by any fondness for Orlando, or by any indifference towards Indiana - it's caused by the knowledge that the place I really want to be (or two-thirds of me does anyway) is 2000 miles away from either place.

Oh, well. It's my own damn fault.

Okay, so here's what I've done so far in Orlando:

The only place with any decent beer within walking distance of the hotel. A lot of taps, but only a few drinkable brews.

Today I went over to Epcot Center and took some pictures.

This is the limo that I rode in to the park. My friend EmptySpace joined me. Koko got pissed about Florida's anti-smoking laws and went back to Indiana on Monday.

This is everything I knew about Epcot before I arrived there.

There was this loop around a lake where they pretended that they were different countries. I took a picture of each area:

Also on the loop was England, where I for some reason didn't take a picture but instead ate some fish and chips and drank a half-yard of Guinness.

Wait, this counts as England. These were some people impersonating the Beatles. I don't know if they were any good or not because I never liked the real Beatles.

I guess some kid died on this ride yesterday. I hope his family got their money back.

Floriday is absolutely infested with these little lizards.

Anyway, I'm not really having very much fun, but at least I'm not just sitting in my room all the time. Tomorrow night I need to go to Hard Rock to get myself and VigilanteGirl some t-shirts.

nice pics..hope you donty mind..using one as background

I donty mind at all. If you wanty a higher-res version sendy me an e-mail and I'll checky if I havey one.

Guess which one is me.

Sunday night:

Monday night:

Okay, I'm going to the airport now.

Will update when I feel like it.

Bye.

Got this from another 'blog.

Bold the ones you have done:

01. Bought everyone in the pub a drink
02. Swam with wild dolphins
03. Climbed a mountain (more like hiked up it)
04. Taken a Ferrari for a test drive
05. Been inside the Great Pyramid
06. Held a tarantula
07. Taken a candlelit bath with someone
08. Said "I love you" and meant it
09. Hugged a tree
10. Done a striptease
11. Bungee jumped
12. Visited Paris
13. Watched a lightning storm at sea (watched from the shore)
14. Stayed up all night long, and watch the sun rise
15. Seen the Northern Lights
16. Gone to a huge sports game
17. Walked the stairs to the top of the leaning Tower of Pisa
18. Grown and eaten your own vegetables
19. Touched an iceberg
20. Slept under the stars
21. Changed a baby's diaper
22. Taken a trip in a hot air balloon
23. Watched a meteor shower
24. Gotten drunk on champagne (didn't take very much either)
25. Given more than you can afford to charity
26. Looked up at the night sky through a telescope
27. Had an uncontrollable giggling fit at the worst possible moment
28. Had a food fight
29. Bet on a winning horse
30. Taken a sick day when you're not ill
31. Asked out a stranger
32. Had a snowball fight
33. Photocopied your bottom on the office photocopier
34. Screamed as loudly as you possibly can
35. Held a lamb
36. Enacted a favorite fantasy
37. Taken a midnight skinny dip
38. Taken an ice cold bath -  does a shower count
39. Had a meaningful conversation with a beggar
40. Seen a total eclipse
41. Ridden a roller coaster
42. Hit a home run
43. Fit three weeks miraculously into three days
44. Danced like a fool and not cared who was looking
45. Adopted an accent for an entire day
46. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors
47. Actually felt happy about your life, even for just a moment
48. Had two hard drives for your computer (have three now)
49. Visited all 50 states
50. Loved your job for all accounts
51. Taken care of someone who was shit faced
52. Had enough money to be truly satisfied
53. Had amazing friends
54. Danced with a stranger in a foreign country
55. Watched wild whales
56. Stolen a sign and construction cones (those flashy barricade things)
57. Backpacked in Europe
58. Taken a road-trip
59. Rock climbing
60. Lied to foreign government's official in that country to avoid notice
61. Midnight walk on the beach
62. Sky diving
63. Visited Ireland
64. Been heartbroken longer then you were actually in love
65. In a restaurant, sat at a stranger's table and had a meal with them
66. Visited Japan
67. Bench pressed your own weight
68. Milked a cow
69. Alphabetized your records and books and video tapes and DVDs and personal records
70. Pretended to be a superhero
71. Sung karaoke
72. Lounged around in bed all day
73. Posed nude in front of strangers
74. Scuba diving
75. Got it on to "Let's Get It On" by Marvin Gaye
76. Kissed in the rain
77. Played in the mud
78. Played in the rain
79. Gone to a drive-in theater
80. Done something you should regret, but don't regret it
81. Visited the Great Wall of China
82. Discovered that someone who's not supposed to have known about your blog has discovered your blog
83. Dropped Windows in favor of something better
84. Started a business
85. Fallen in love and not had your heart broken
86. Toured ancient sites (does hundreds of years old count as ancient)?
87. Taken a martial arts class
88. Swordfought for the honor of a woman
89. Played D&D for more than 6 hours straight
90. Gotten married
91. Been in a movie
92. Crashed a party
93. Loved someone you shouldn't have
94. Kissed someone so passionately it made them dizzy
95. Gotten divorced
96. Had sex at the office
97. Gone without food for 5 days
98. Made cookies from scratch
99. Won first prize in a costume contest
100. Ridden a gondola in Venice
101. Gotten a tattoo
102. Found that the texture of some materials can turn you on
103. Rafted the Snake River
104. Been on television news programs as an "expert"
105. Got flowers for no reason
106. Masturbated in a public place
107. Got so drunk you don't remember anything
108. Been addicted to some form of illegal drug
109. Performed on stage
110. Been to Las Vegas
111. Recorded music
112. Eaten shark
113. Had a one-night stand
114. Gone to Thailand
115. Seen Siouxsie live
116. Bought a house
117. Been in a combat zone
118. Buried both of your parents (didn't actually bury them but I was there when it happened)
119. Shaved or waxed your pubic hair off
120. Been on a cruise ship (just a little one)
121. Spoken more than one language fluently
122. Gotten into a fight while attempting to defend someone
123. Bounced a check
124. Performed in Rocky Horror
125. Read - and understood - your credit report
126. Raised children (at least for a while)
127. Recently bought and played with a favorite childhood toy
128. Followed your favorite band/singer on tour
129. Created and named your own constellation of stars
130. Taken an exotic bicycle tour in a foreign country
131. Found out something significant that your ancestors did
132. Called or written your Congress person
133. Picked up and moved to another city to just start over
134. more than once? - More than thrice? (I'd say three times)
135. Walked the Golden Gate Bridge
136. Sang loudly in the car, and didn't stop when you knew someone was looking
137. Had an abortion - Paid for an abortion
138. Had plastic surgery
139. Survived an accident that you shouldn't have survived
140. Wrote articles for a large publication
141. Lost over 100 pounds
142. Held someone while they were having a flashback
143. Piloted an airplane
144. Petted a stingray
145. Broken someone's heart (unfortunately)
146. Helped an animal give birth
147. Been fired or laid off from a job
148. Won money on a T.V. game show
149. Broken a bone
150. Killed a human being
151. Gone on an African photo safari
152. Ridden a motorcycle
153. Driven any land vehicle at a speed of greater than 100mph
154. Had a body part of yours below the neck pierced
155. Fired a rifle, shotgun, or pistol
156. Eaten mushrooms that were gathered in the wild
157. Ridden a horse
158. Had major surgery
159. Had sex on a moving train
160. Had a snake as a pet
161. Hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon
162. Slept through an entire flight: takeoff, flight, and landing
163. Slept for more than 30 hours over the course of 48 hours
164. Visited more foreign countries than U.S. states
165. Visited all 7 continents
166. Taken a canoe trip that lasted more than 2 days
167. Eaten kangaroo meat
168. Fallen in love at an ancient Mayan burial ground
169. Been a sperm or egg donor
170. Eaten sushi
171. Had your picture in the newspaper
172. Had 2 (or more) healthy romantic relationships for over a year in your lifetime
173. Changed someone's mind about something you care deeply about
174. Gotten someone fired for their actions
175. Gone back to school
176. Parasailed
177. Changed your name
178. Petted a cockroach
179. Eaten fried green tomatoes
180. Read The Iliad
181. Selected one "important" author who you missed in school, and read
182. Dined in a restaurant and stolen silverware, plates, cups because your apartment needed them
183. and gotten 86'ed from the restaurant because you did it so many times, they figured out it was you
184. Taught yourself an art from scratch
185. Killed and prepared an animal for eating (do fish count?)
186. Apologized to someone years after inflicting the hurt
187. Skipped all your school reunions
188. Communicated with someone without sharing a common spoken language
189. Been elected to public office
190. Written your own computer language
191. Thought to yourself that you're living your dream
192. Had to put someone you love into hospice care
193. Built your own PC from parts
194. Sold your own artwork to someone who didn't know you (counting this because people ask for permission to use my stuff and I let them)
195. Had a booth at a street fair
196: Dyed your hair
197: Been a DJ
198: Found out someone was going to dump you
199: Written your own role playing game
200: Been arrested (sort of)

Ended up leaving the house early last night to escape the heat. After some ping-ponging back and forth I decided to eat dinner at this Tucker's place that I hadn't been to in months.

This is a pretty decent little place when it's not too crowded. The only decent beers they have on tap are Guinness and I guess Blue Moon. If you ask for a large beer they'll give you this big giant glass that I'd guess is about 24 ounces. I chose a large Guinness to go with my fish and chips.

While I was eating I talked with my cousin Jeff for a while on the phone. This was good because everyone had pretty much figured that Jeff had died since nobody had been able to contact him for weeks.

Once I finished eating I went on over to Rich O's.

All of my preferred seating was taken. DeadLady and her boyfriend/son were on the loveseat, some young couple were on the sofa, and two women I don't know were at the island. I sat at the bar and ordered a Spezial Rauchbier. Pretty good.

After a while DooRagGirl came in a sat at the bar. We talked a little bit, mostly about her writings. I ordered a Smithwick's.

At one point ElPresident and FirstLady came in. One of the things that FirstCouple and I discussed was the fact that Rich O's had unveiled a new beer, and that I should really at least try it, if only out of loyalty to the place. So I did:

New Albanian Croupier IPA

(draft) Just had a small sample of this, as IPA is probably my least favorite style. This didn't taste too bad until I swallowed it, then the hoppiness made itself known. A pretty heavy beer, one that I probably won't bother having again.

I talked DooRagGirl into trying a Mad Bitch. She didn't like it so I finished her sample glass for her.

Eventually enough people left the living room so I went and sat in the throne for a while and had a Diet Coke.

A pretty boring night which I ended fairly early because I'd yet to do a single thing to get ready for my Orlando trip.

I could have fun doing this shit.

DooRagGirl told me about this comic style where you just used dots and didn't need any artistic abilities whatsoever.

No artistic abilities - Hey, that's me!

I'm sitting in my office. It's about 80 degrees in the house, and my vents are spewing hot air.

Why are they spewing hot air?

Because I've turned my thermostat up to 95 degrees, that's why.

Why would I do such a stupid thing?

Because my air conditioner has been running nearly non-stop for a couple of weeks now, and the air handler is encrusted with ice, as are the lines running to the outside unit.

This ice manages to melt a little bit every now and then, and so now my basement has large areas of wetness.

I hope this ice building was caused by the fact that I haven't cleaned my filter in a thousand years. It was pretty filthy.

So I took the filter outside and hosed it off to make it nice and clean, and now I'm running my heat pump in heat mode to hopefully melt this ice buildup.

My thinking is that, since I run it in cool mode during the Winter to remove ice buildup on the outside unit, maybe running it in heat mode in the Summer will remove ice buildup on the inside parts.

We'll see. This would suck anyway, but it sucks even more because I'm leaving town in the morning. I don't think I can bring myself to leave the air conditioning off while I'm gone - my cats would melt.

So I'll have to call the guys while I'm in Orlando and make arrangements for somebody to be here when they come out to inspect and/or repair my system.

Kind of an abbreviated beer report tonight. Abbreviated because of this:

Founders Dirty Bastard

(draft) This beer knocked me on my ass. Very dark red, nearly black, with a decent head and more lacing than I expected. The flavor was a little intense. I kept wanting to call this a Winter warmer without the Winter part. A beer to celebrate happiness or drown sorrows, not a beer to simply enjoy.

Hey Roger, this stuff is 8.3% according to ratebeer. It hit me like it was more like 18.3% though.

I had this after work. It pretty much gave me an instant hangover. Even after I took a nap and got up at 8:30 I was still hung-over.

So of course I went to Rich O's.

I'd figured that I'd just drink Diet Coke tonight, but after the first one I did end up having a pint of Smithwick's. Pretty good, but it did nothing to cure me, and I switched back to Diet Cokes for the rest of the night.

Spent the night feeling pretty claustrophobic, sitting in the living room area with OddlyFamiliarGirl, CoffeeDude, NotGeorge, and several people that I don't know.

Oh, yeah. My cousin Jamie was sitting out in the loser section. I didn't talk to him for very long though. Kind of felt like I was intruding or something. Jamie's sort of hard to read.

Usually when I'm sitting with a bunch of people, I'll just keep quiet and listen in on the conversations, only adding my $.02 rarely. Tonight I really felt like an outsider, sitting there with my Diet Coke while everyone else drank beer and talked about fishing and their kids' elementary schools. I had very little to add to those discussions so I kept very quiet all night. They all probably think I'm sad about you know what, but I'm not. Just a little hung-over, and a little clautrophobic.

After I left Rich O's I stopped and visited VigilanteGirl for a while, and that helped my mood a lot. She made me take some donuts home. They're taunting me from the kitchen.

Just an excerpt from a long time ago:

I don't know why he's taking this exit. Why is he following us?

Because he wuuuuuvs you.

No he doesn't!

Silly, to know you is to wuv you.

Don't know what reminded me of this conversation, but it made me smile.

I'm pretty sure that I got the number sequence one wrong. I always over-analyze those.

Your IQ Is 135

Your Logical Intelligence is Genius Your Verbal Intelligence is Genius Your Mathematical Intelligence is Genius Your General Knowledge is Exceptional

Today we had a work meeting at Churchill Downs.

Even though I grew up here in Indiana, and have spent 24 years living here, I've never bothered to go to this track.

I wouldn't even have gone today if they hadn't made me.

Being around horses reminds me of things I'd rather not be reminded of.

Anyway, I took some pics.

This was display stand, made up to look like the track and stands, just filled with hundreds and hundreds of little crystal figurines. It was very cool, and it looked very fucking expensive.

We had our meeting in the new "luxury box" addition to the place. I guess a lot of people are mad that the spires no longer stand out above everything else anymore. I guess I can understand their feelings.

I ended up staying to watch one race, then I went to work and caught up on some stuff.

Just wanted to say that I'm pretty embarrassed over how incredibly fucking boring this 'blog has become.

What am I, a fifteen-year-old kid, with nothing to say but mundane bullshit about my boring life?

Today I wrote about a cheeseburger for fuck's sake!

I need to do better than this.

I need to find something that stirs the passions within me. Something that gets these creative juices flowing. Something that enrages me, or makes me deliriously happy. Something that I care about and can't shut up about.

Have I become so accustomed to the turmoil in my heart that I've become jaded by it? Have I grown so complacent that nothing affects me? Am I a robot?

No, no, and no.

I sit here on nights like this, with this gorilla flicking boogers into the back of my head, and I want to start typing and just keep at it until my fingers are bloody nubs. Until everything I've been holding back for all these months has been released in one colossal fit of honesty and brutality and ...

But I don't.

It's not that I have nothing to say. I have plenty that I could say.

I just need to find something else.

Man I'm tired.

Today we had a working lunch meeting at the Hard Rock. Probably only the third or fourth time that I've eaten lunch at work in the past 10 years..

This is not because I'm an anti-social asshole, as conventional theory holds. It's because when I eat I get tired, and when I eat in the middle of the day it just wipes me out and pretty much makes me useless for the rest of the day.

The food at the Hard Rock was okay. Just basic stuff I guess. I had a cheeseburger that was underdone and it came with like a dozen fries. I also sampled some potato skins and this pineapple-chicken-bbq quesadilla thingy that wasn't too bad. Potato skins with cheese and bacon are perhaps the 20th century's greatest contribution to mankind.

Or maybe not. I still like them.

My drink choices at the Hard Rock were, as expected, pretty limited, so I had a couple Guinnii. Pretty damn good stuff, that Guinness.

After work I stopped by Rich O's to meet up with RealTrainGirl and MisunderstoodGirl. While I was waiting I had an NABC Blonde Abbey.

While I was waiting some more I had a couple more Guinnii. Yummy.

Anyway, the girls finally showed up and MisunderstoodGirl and I got a kick out of listening to all of the train lingo that was being slung by RealTrainGirl and ChefDude.

I've been helping MisunderstoodGirl set up her own 'blog so we talked about that for a bit, and I offered to host her pictures because the free account she has at JournalSpace doesn't allow pictures.

I think I'm going to go to sleep now. Big day tomorrow. Going to the track.

Also, I missed her today. It was probably because of the Guinness.

Got my hair cut after work yesterday, and the lady was telling about this unusual problem she's having with her swimming pool.

She went to clear off what she thought were leaves stuck to the inside of the pool near the filter housing, and when she touched them, they took off swimming across the pool!

Her "leaves" were actually bats.

That's right, bats.

She had about a dozen of them inside her swimming pool!

I've never heard of bats being able to swim before, but a quick googling tells me that some of them can indeed do it.

So Dina, that's something else for you to worry about when you're lounging around in the pool.

You're welcome.

I suppose I should really consider thinking about maybe starting to get ready for my trip to Orlando.

I'm just not very excited about it. I've never been there - never been to the state of Florida at all in fact - but I just cannot imagine it comparing well to Las Vegas.

An awful lot depends on whether there are any good bars and/or touristy areas near the hotel. I'm not planning on going to Disney World, I hate lines way to much for that.

I guess I'll just have to wait and see what happens. Maybe I'll surprise myself and have fun. I did in Portland after all.

I wish I would have chosen to fly down there on Saturday instead of Sunday. That way I'd have all day Sunday to goof around. Maybe rent a car and go to the ocean or The Everglades or something. As it stands I probably won't bother with a car unless there's nothing to do at night around the hotel.

I'm supposed to fly back home Thursday night. I guess that, if I'm really enjoying myself, I could see about returning Friday instead and burn a day of vacation.

Fifteen. That's how many people asked me about my last entry. Specifically, that's how many people asked me about number 9.

A lot of people seemed to think that I had embedded a signal in there somewhere. A lot of people seemed to think that my hidden signal was directed at them.

So I'll make it clear.

The Consonant Of Doom is a K, though a hard C will also work in a pinch.

Not M. Not D. Not L. Not even J, though that one hasn't been too lucky either.

And those of you who asked about A - I suppose I can understand your guess, but that is a vowel.

Man I'm bored right now.

1. I can juggle. Not chainsaws or cats or shit like that, but balls and stuff. I could probably do bowling pins.

2. I can solve most puzzles in the Rubik's Cube genre. I've been meaning to put a section about these puzzles on this site, but haven't gotten around to it yet.

3. When I drink a Guinness, it does usually mean something. You get one guess what that is. Get over it if you don't like it.

4. Back in my day, women with belly-button rings and/or tatoos were sluts. I have a hard time getting passed that sort of biased thinking. I'm an old dog after all.

5. Twice in my life I've developed crushes on the wives of my best friends. This either means that I'm an asshole or that I'm normal - I haven't decided yet.

6. The first girl I was ever involved with for any length of time cheated on me. So did the second. And the fourth, fifth, and sixth. The third killed herself. These facts just might explain why I have some slight intimacy and trust issues.

7. A banana milkshake from Polly's Freeze is my all-time favorite treat in the universe. My cat Happy thinks so too.

8. For whatever reason, whenever I see a cat I simply must pet it. I've been known to chase cats around the parking lot at the Gas'N'Stuff for an hour just so I could pet them.

9. A long time ago I determined that a certain consonant sound, when appearing at the beginning of a girl's name, was enough to signal certain doom should I try to have a relationship with said girl.

10. In this 'blog, I hold back about 90% of what's going on in my head.

(response to message)

How did you get the people out of the way long enough to take that poster-pic? It's a high traffic area.

Cool site, but the set-up aggravates me. no direct comments, etc...

As far as taking the picture went, it's amazing how quickly people will get out of your way when you threaten to take their picture and put it on the Internet. Plus I took the thing after work one day last week so it wasn't that crowded.

I had a much simpler 'blog navigation setup originally, but several people complained that they wanted the ability to see the posts in either ascending or descending order. That's pretty much why things seem so complicated. You do have a lot of choices to make though. I think most people just keep hitting the "previous" link until they run out of new stuff. A lot of people will also switch to ascending ordering almost immediately. I always do that when I'm reading my old entries.

I don't have individual comments for my 'blog entries because I don't have the time to screen comments before they get posted, and I've seen enough abuse dumped on other bloggers via their comment forms that I just decided to pass on the whole public comments thing.

Anyway, thanks for reading!

This poster hangs at Rich O's. I really like it. It's just so busy. Everywhere you look there's something going on, people having fun. Each little section is its own scene, unencumbered and uninfluenced by the goings-on of the scenes elsewhere.

This is kind of like the scene at my niece's graduation party yesterday.

Except that there wasn't quite as much beer. And instead of people making beer, there were people swimming and talking and pitching horseshoes and playing volleyball. And instead of workers and pagan characters and smiling buildings and royalty, there were a bunch of people that I hadn't seen in several years. And instead of hops growing all over, there were eighteen year old girls hopping all over the volleyball court.

Just to briefly list the relatives that I hadn't seen in a long time (or ever) that showed up yesterday:

• My cousin Durenda and her husband Kevin (two or three years)
• My cousin Lynette and her husband Bill (maybe a year, maybe two)
• My aunt Susie (about 6 years!)
• My second cousin Taylor (never in her twelve years of life)
• My cousin Michelle and her husband Barry (13 years!!!)
• Three more second cousins - Michelle's kids (never seen before)

Most of the regulars were also there, with the exception of my cousin Jeff who wasn't returning any calls, and Dan "Holy Shit" Kruer and his wife Chris who had other plans.

So I guess my sister has been holding out on me. She does have hot friends. At least one anyway, and I'm now hopeful that she'll "remember" some others. Some that aren't married.

I spent about the first hour on the deck by the pool talking with my sisters and my cousins and my aunt. At one point I realized that I was completely surrounded by estrogen and decided to escape before, as Neisha warned, I started getting cramps and developing uncontrollable urges to ask people for directions.

I pitched a dozen or so games of horseshoes. The first game I lost with my cousin Mike. The next ten games I won with a coworker of Kenny's or with my friend Eric, then I lost the last game with Kenny.

By then it was dark, and I sat for a bit talking with Eric's wife Terri while the guys tried to pitch one final game of horseshoes by sense of smell or something. I don't think that worked out very well for them, but no paramedics were called so it could have been worse.

Let's see, to drink I had a half-gallon of NABC Blonde Abbey. That's a lot of 7% beer to drink but it was spread out over several hours so I was okay.

Once I left Dina's I drove down to Rich O's (even though I was filthy) and had a diet coke while talking with RealTrainGirl and MisunderstoodGirl, and some dude that looks like Buddy Rich, and DooRagGirl.

I guess I'm a little sunburned. I don't look that red by I can definitely feel it in my face. It will probably start to peel, further increasing my already undeniable sex appeal. Today I get to mow my lawn so I'll probably look like a tomato by this evening.

It starts as a tickle. An itch. An inkling of a sensation so faint that he hardly recognizes it. When he finally notices it, this faint ghost of a feeling, it explodes. He suddenly feels his body again, and it is on fire. For a million eternities he has felt nothing, and now he relishes in the pain.

For the pain tells him that he lives. That he exists.

Through the pain, he feels his body rise.

Found this old quiz on DooRagGirl's 'blog. The image seems to be broken.

You are a sock. You are a cozy, fuzzy, warm-hearted person. A lot of your friends describe you as a hopeless romantic. You fall for the opposite sex very easily. But be careful, because usually you don't know what you are getting into, and because you are very sensitive, you can get hurt... especially in early relationships. Also, don't exclude the cold-hearted from your "want-list", because they just might be looking for a kind person to warm up their heart.... or a sock to warm up their feet. Most compatible with: Toilet Paper. Click here -- What Random Object Represents Your Inner Self?

Ran across this site the other day.

I'd say that the Internet has officially peaked.

I'd also say that if I had a better quality version of this picture:

I would enter it and it would be a champion.

Went to the TicketMaster site at about 9:50 and started hitting refresh, waiting somewhat impatiently for Kelly Clarkson tickets to go on sale.

10:00 passed...

10:01 passed...

10:02 passed...

Finally, at 10:03 it let me buy tickets.

Sort of.

The first seats it offered me were third row, on the floor, just to the left of center-stage. I quickly clicked through the screens to buy the tickets and...

Got a fucking error!

We're sorry for for inconvenience. Please try your order again later.

Okay, so I went back to the beginning and, after several attempts, the best seats I could find are in section 6, off the floor, back quite a bit from the stage.

Not exactly the nosebleed section, but nowhere near as good as the first seats would have been.

Didn't get the error message this time around so I have fucking Kelly Clarkson tickets!!!

Yay!

Just in case this was legit, though I really doubt that it was:

---

(Now the subject changes completely.)

Anyway, tonight I was supposed to go out to the BBC and help usher CanadianGirl out from Louisville. She's moving to Omaha, one of my all-time favorite places, and a bunch of people from work were supposed to meet there tonight to get her drunk and maybe talk her into dancing on the bar or something equally embarrassing.

Well I did make the longish drive out to Shelbyville Road, and I did (eventually) find my way to the BBC brewpub. What I didn't do was stay there for more than about five minutes.

I looked around for anyone I knew and didn't see anyone, so I left. I probably could have done a more thorough search, but there was this asswipe playing a guitar and if there's one thing I really wasn't in the mood for tonight it was live music.

So I left Louisville's East end and went to Rich O's.

The place was really crowded, and I ended up sitting at the bar all night. All I had to drink were a couple pints of Smithwick's and then I came home. I'm pretty fucking tired still from last night's supernap and the resulting sleep deprivation.

So now my plan is to go to sleep and get up before 10:00 so I can buy Kelly Clarkson tickets.

This week's Pisces horoscope from Free Will Astrology:

I invite you to try an exercise in creative pretending. Ready? In all the ways you can imagine, stop thinking that you're outside, and instead visualize yourself as inside. In other words, suppress your tendency to fantasize that the good stuff is out of reach and hard to get. Picture yourself as being right in the midst of it. End your sense of exile and come all the way in to the heart of every matter. If you do this meditation ten minutes a day for the next seven days, by this time next week the world will already be changing to match the vision you've been building.

Okay, so what Captain Tofu is basically saying here is that if I imagine good shit happening then good shit will happen.

The power of positive thinking, right?

What I want to know is: What about those times when your own internal definition of what constitutes "good shit" changes every 10 minutes?

If I fucking knew what I wanted, and if I could fucking hold on to that desire for any length of time, then maybe this mumbo jumbo bullshit would be worth a try. But as things stand, I'd hate to use my mental powers to veer the cosmos towards a particular goal only to realize 10 minutes later that it's no longer what I want at all, and that the cosmos has too much inertia to allow me to just keep steering it around.

Okay, I'm at my childhood home except it's present day and it's somehow my house now. My mom and my sister Dina and I are discussing arrangements to take care of my cats because I'm going somewhere for work or something.

There are somebody's kids running around interrupting that they don't like the front door - they want to come in another door while I'm gone. I try to explain that only some of the doors are designated as "entry doors" by my alarm system and any other doors being opened cause the alarm to go off immediately. The problem is that I cannot remember which doors, besides the front one, are designated as entry doors.

While I'm trying to recall my security schematics Dina is harping on and on about something coming up on TV that needs to be tivoed. She doesn't remember which channel for sure and I say that I think it's channel 25. She reads something that indicates that 25 is the wrong channel. This is apparently the closest that Dina's ever come to proving me wrong about anything in about a gazillion years so she starts gloating and rubbing it in. She even called me "Dumbass McStupid" at one point.

To get away from the gloating, and the screaming kids, I decide to take off for Lanesville. I start walking towards my grandmother's old house because for some reason that's where my truck is parked. As I leave my house I ponder the fact that there's a pretty nice deck and wheelchair ramp in front now.

Dina tries to follow me so she can keep taunting me, but I shuffle my feet on the driveway and pretend that it makes so much noise that I can't hear her and, eventually, I leave her behind.

Now, once I get to my grandmother's old house I for some reason decide to take my grandfather's old Plymouth something or other instead of my truck. The car's a complete piece of shit but I've been driving it every now and then. With my grandfather dead I figure that somebody should make use of the car. It might be a piece of shit, but it's a classic piece of shit.

One of the many things wrong with this car is that it's got baloney rinds for tires so it can't make it out of the driveway. The tires just spin in the loose gravel and walnut husks. While I'm trying to get enough speed built up to get out of the driveway my uncle Carl pulls up and I remember that he's been driving the car as well, and he kind of thinks of it as his own. I manage to put the car back into its parking place which is tough because the car has no brakes either.

What Carl is doing there is having somebody install this bright red girder about 15 feet up between two telephone poles. One of the guys has a very large hand tool that seems especially designed for this purpose - it allowed him to tighten the bolts at both ends of the girder at the same time.

My uncle Ron is there and he starts complaining about the cost of putting the giant red girder between the telephone poles, but Carl assures Ron that he'll take care of the costs himself.

So I get in my truck and turn right out of the driveway. I realize that I'm very thirsty and decide to stop at Polly's for a soda. There's something wrong with my headlights and while I'm adjusting them I see that the people who own Polly's have cut down all of their trees. This, plus fiddling with my lights, manages to distract me enough that I drive through Paul and Donna's front yard to get to Polly's.

I pull into a parking spot and Paul comes running out. He's just livid that somebody just drove though his yard, and he's beyond livid when he sees that it was me. This guy has spent millions of dollars putting up fences, signs, and sniper towers to keep Polly's customers off his property and then I, who should know better, drive my fucking truck across his front yard.

I don't blame Paul for being so angry. He tells me to leave and not come back until next Summer. I think that I'm lucky he didn't ban me for life. I try to explain that it was just an accident, but Paul is in such a rage of screaming and flailing about that I don't think he's even listening to me. I become afraid that Paul's going to have a heart attack or something he's so mad. Donna comes running out of the store to see what's wrong and Paul manages to sputter out what I've done. I tell Donna one last time that it was an accident and that I hope Paul calms down, then I leave.

As I'm leaving Polly's lot, I notice that it's closed and somebody has busted all of the windows out of the front like they're doing a massive remodeling project or something.

Then I wake up.

I read today in LEO that Kelly Clarkson is coming to Louisville!

VigilanteGirl and I are soooo going! I was actually surprised to find that she's a Kelly fan, but I'm sure she was more surprised to hear about how much I love Kelly. I think she had me pegged as more of a Bing Crosby or Frank Sinatra fan.

Of course, tickets don't go on sale until Saturday, so I really need to be on the ball to make sure I buy two tickets at 10:00 AM before they sell out.

Also, the concert itself isn't until August 24th, and all sorts of things could happen between now and then, but for now I'm as excited as shit!

Does shit really get excited?

Just changed the beer page from a static page to a dynamically-generated one. Visitors shouldn't see any difference, but this will make it much easier for me to add new entries when I'm travelling.

I need to decide if I'm going to be concerned with the order of the entries. For now they're mostly alphabetical, but any new ones I add will just get stuck at the top.

If I decide that the order of the entries is actually important to me then I've got more work to do, and I'm not really sure where to begin.

(update: Okay, I've figured out how to keep the listing alphabetized. The beer page is actually a separate 'blog, specifically it's a single-page archive for all entries in a new "beer" 'blog.

Because this particular archive page doesn't include the date of the posting, I decided to use that posting date for sort order.

So what I did was go back and change the date on all of the entries to match their alphabetical order. I left plenty of blank dates between entries so that any new entries can just be added with the proper date to put it in its proper alphabetical place. Pretty snazzy.)

(response to message)

Ha ha, very funny.

While I seriously doubt that you are who you pretend to be, you do actually make a valid point.

I just might be a dumbass. In fact, I'd even go so far as to say that I probably am a dumbass.

But not for the reasons that you imply.

The simple fact that so much time has passed pretty much has to invalidate that theory.

Nope, if I'm indeed a dumbass, it's for reasons that you and others of your ilk just don't seem to understand. Reasons that, were you to actually be who you're pretending to be, you'd almost certainly get. Maybe not like, but at least get.

If I'm a dumbass, at least I mean well. There have been far stupider things, done for far less altruistic reasons, than what I'm doing now. Or not doing now. Whatever.

In the end I may very well be proven wrong. Perhaps someday I'll look back at the results of my (in)actions and just weep. Perhaps someday I'll realize just what it is that I've done, and I'll simply be unable to live with that knowledge, and I'll throw myself off a cliff or something.

Perhaps someday I'll see these holes in my awareness filled with facts instead of conjecture.

But for now I have to go with what I do know.

And what I do know, right here, right now, is that I'm taking the only course of action available to me that keeps the vast bulk of the pain directed inward. Where it should be. Back towards the source.

And, if you happen to be who you pretend to be, that was a pretty callous and mean-spirited thing to say. But I forgive you.

That's what friends do after all.