(continued from here)

Okay, I've decided on new nicknames for HotGirl and HotGirlsHotCousin. They shall now be known as BadPickleGirl and ForkGirl, respectively.

I suppose that every silver cloud has a dark lining. At least they do in my experience. But as I'm sure that nobody who'd ever read this would be able to summon even the tiniest smidgeon of pity for me, I'm going to keep this particular observation to myself.

At one point WomanRepellant came in and sat at the island with some PBDs. It turned out that ForkGirl knows him from like twenty years ago. Small world. So she went up to talk to WomanRepellant and I got to stay with BadPickleGirl. Courtesy might have required me to take advantage of some of the empty space that was then available on the sofa, but I wasn't going to move - I was going to make BadPickleGirl ask me to move.

She never did.

So there.

I found myself being irritated with my hands and arms. It was like I'd just got them on sale or something and they weren't quite under my control yet. So I kept my hands clasped together in my lap to keep them from doing anything stupid.

ForkGirl and WomanRepellant came back and joined us at about the time that I talked BadPickleGirl into trying a Rogue Smoke. She claimed to like it okay. It's always surprising to me when a VP likes a smoked beer. I had a half-pint (350) myself.

Let's see, BadPickleGirl told me a line to use if I ever again find myself in a situation like last weekend where I need to get away but I still want to maintain some dignity.

What I have to do is look the other person in the eyes and say, "I'm sorry, but I have to go take a shit."

The beauty of this line is that it's very unlikely that anyone will ever argue with it. So you can get away cleanly. Oh, and you can also go take a shit if you feel like it, but you probably shouldn't come back to the other person with proof of the shit. That would be overkill I think.

I think that's about it. One by one, most of the moths gave up and left. MusicalHippyDude came over for a while. Everybody just relaxed. BadPickleGirl and I waited for a million years or so while ForkGirl finished her beer.

Or maybe it just evaporated - it was hard to tell. But at any rate it was eventually gone, so we all left. I got a big kick out of the remaining moths and their last-ditch efforts.