The last couple of nights have been nice. It's been so warm that I've been able to sit out on my swing, enjoy a tasty beverage, and contemplate things for a while. Life and love and the lack of both, mostly.

Things might become interesting here in a few months, around Derby time, as StupidGirl has hinted at making a trip here. But a lot can happen between now and then. I certainly don't want to be pinning too many hopes - or fears - on something that's still in such early stages of planning.

Not even planning, really.

More like thinking about.

Which is totally fair, because that's pretty much all I've been doing for the last couple of hours.

Should I look at this as an opportunity to be saved from this quagmire I'm in, or as more of a temporary distraction? Perhaps I should see it as a giant turd, and my life would be a fan.

Meanwhile, I can't even believe that it's almost 2:00 in the flipping morning. I need to learn how to sleep.

So, I quit my job.

I'm not really sure what led me to make the decision, I just did it. I was in a staff meeting, a meeting no better or worse than the dozens of other meetings I've endured every week for six years, and I'd suddenly had enough.

I got up, and I walked out.

Luckily, I got a new job right away, with a start-up company specializing in outfitting corporate jets for Internet and video conferencing. A couple of my old bosses from Seattle were running the thing, and they were glad to have me. They knew my value, from before. So that was cool.

My first day, I met a few other people. There actually weren't very many people to meet. Only about six of us total. This gave me some cause for concern, but I figured that maybe they were still looking for other hires.

The thing that really freaked me out was when I remembered that I'd left all of my pictures at my old desk. Some of those pictures, I realized, were irreplaceable.

I tried to think of a way that I could go back to my old desk and get my pictures, but I knew there was no way they'd ever let me in. I'd burned that particular bridge too thoroughly. There was no going back.

Anyway, tomorrow I go back to work, after nine days off.

Yes, it will suck. Mainly because my sleep schedule is all screwy, and I probably won't sleep tonight until after 3:00.

My recent absence hasn't been caused by any great drama or anything like that. I've just been busy doing boring stuff. There's this pool tournament that started on Friday. I usually play in the thing, but this year all I did was go watch for a while. On Friday, and on Saturday, and on Sunday.

It's cool to be around pool players for a change.

Anyway, I've gone to the tournament, and then I've gone to Rich O's, and then I've come home. That's been my life for the past three days and nights. Like I said, boring.

Oh yeah, last night after Rich O's I went to this Mac's place that I don't like. I wanted to listen to some karaoke for a while. It was fun I guess. Nobody was any good, though. Also, I think I'm going to stop calling that place Mac's and start calling it Sluttopia. Or maybe Whoreapolis. I haven't decided.

I never said this would be an exciting entry. Or maybe I did, in the title of the thing. Oops.

...will actually not be complete until tomorrow.

But, that's okay.

It's still a good deed.

So there.

Sometimes, usually, I think about things that I'm not supposed to think about. I feel guilty when this happens, but I don't feel that guilty. Because it's not like I really have a choice. Nope, all choices were stripped from me a long time ago. I do what I do. I muddle through.

But anyway, I spend a lot of time feeling a little bit guilty, because of these tracks that my trains of thought like to follow. Often, I almost manage to convince myself that I'm a bad person, because of these thoughts of mine. These hopes of mine. These dreams of mine.

Selfish.

But sometimes, sometimes I manage to do something decent, say something decent. And I surprise myself, because I didn't think that I had any decency left in me.

It's nice to be wrong, sometimes.

---

Beauty is fleeting, or so they say.

But I don't believe them, not even for a second.

I think they're doing it wrong. I think they're using their eyes.

Close their eyes, and they will see the truth.

Beauty is eternal.

This morning, just now actually, I was reminded of something that bugs me.

Let's say I write this in my blog:

It was freakin' cold this morning. Nine whole degrees when I woke up at the crack of 10:00. And yes, I know it's a lot colder than that in other places.

I'm annoyed by this use of the "and yes" segue. It just rubs me the wrong way. It patronizingly presumes that the writer knows what the reader is thinking, then it casually dismisses the reader's thought. It's a little argumentative, yet the reader never gets his say. The reader loses an argument that he was never really in to begin with.

Another annoying use of the same segue is here, paraphrased from Slashdot:

It seems that the New Year's Eve fireworks show in Seattle had to be fired manually, because the software that was supposed to run things crashed. And yes, that software runs on Windows.

Anyway, that's my little rant for now. And yes, I know this was a silly entry.

I was just sitting here at my desk, thinking that I should probably write something tonight. Because I've got all this beer in me and I'd hate for it to go to waste.

I was drawing a blank, though. I'd kinda thought about this one thing, but that subject is off-limits for me, plus it's kinda R-rated. Maybe X-Rated. Then, I thought of this other topic, but I really don't know what the facts are, and I don't want to write about my guesses.

So, like I said, I was drawing a bit of a blank. I decided to give up for the night. I tapped out a quick email to RockGirl and, right in the middle of the tapping, I thought of something.

The year 2007 was a pretty fucked-up year for me, if I look at it objectively. It was, despite the one incredibly wonderful thing that happened and which continues to happen, the year 2007 was a huge net loss for me, overall. As far as relationships go, I mean.

I can think of only one relationship that's better off now than it was at the beginning of 2007.

A few have stayed the same, but several have deteriorated or completely gone to shit. One ascended to new heights and then crashed spectacularly over a few short months.

Most of the time, I feel like I don't care nearly as much as I should. Oh, every now and then I'll catch myself missing a relationship that's either gone sour or faded away completely. But it doesn't happen very often, that I feel this way. Probably not as often as it should, should I ever wish to appear normal to those people who know me.

Good thing I don't care about appearing to be normal.

I forget where I was going with this. I think that I wanted to say that I do miss certain people, and that I am sorry for whatever fault I might have had in the ever-increasing distance between us, but that I don't care as much as I should. And that bothers me at least as much as the original stuff does.

I think, I think that if I were a total asshole, as certain people are so wont to proclaim, then my apathy wouldn't bother me at all. But it does. So maybe I'm not that bad after all. Maybe there's hope for me after all. Maybe there's hope for us after all.

It's not like I'm hiding, I just haven't felt like doing much seeking lately.

In the year 2008, I resolve to...

...drink more beer than is probably healthy for me, but it will only be good beer, so my snobbish ways can continue.

...not lose even an ounce of weight. And, even if I do manage to lower the scale because of illness or some such, I resolve to immediately gain it all back, and then add a few extra pounds just to teach myself a lesson.

...blow minor things way out of proportion, lose sight of what's really important, and just generally make a ass out of myself over trivial bullshit.

...ignore anything that might be considered encouraging. Not that I expect anything encouraging to ever happen, but I resolve to ignore such things, just in case. It's preemptive and stuff.

...automatically assume that most people are idiots or assholes or whores or sluts until they prove otherwise. And, furthermore, I resolve to immediately revert to my initial assessment the first time anyone does something I don't like.