Because, as everyone knows, I'm such a people person, I left the throne at Rich O's today and acted as Beer Ambassador to a couple who'd never been in there before.

This couple had come in and announced that it was their first time. The bartender gave them the 10-second spiel - Smoking in the bar area, non-smoking everywhere else, draft beers on the blackboard and bottled beers listed at most tables.

I was sitting, as I said, on the throne. Enjoying a yummy Delirium Tremens (1018). After a while, the new dude came in and sat on the sofa to have a smoke and I talked to him for a bit. I asked him what he and his wife had decided on. He was having an NABC beer, and his wife hadn't decided yet. He admitted to me that it was his wife who was the real beer snob of the two of them.

I went out front and talked to his wife for a while. She likes porters and Belgian beers. So I immediately liked her. We discussed the beers on the draft board - there were a couple of pretty good Belgians that she'd never tried before, and even a yummy porter listed. What wasn't listed, even though I knew for a fact that it was available, was Gulden Draak. I talked her into trying a small sample of Delirium Tremens, but I think she'd already made up her mind and so she had a Gulden Draak. I went back to the throne.

I knew that I wanted another beer, but I also knew that another Tremens would be out of the question on an empty stomach, so I had a small sample of something new to me.

Brooklyn Summer Ale

(draft) Clear gold in color. Good heaping head. No detectable aroma. Tasted like watery grass. Not very good. Not very good at all.

My second full beer ended up being a Paulaner Hefeweissbier (358) and then I came home.

Today I've found myself to be in an incredibly good mood.

And why shouldn't I be? The things that are good are great, fantastic even. More than I ever dared to let myself really, really hope for. And the things that aren't so good, well they're pretty much all irrelevant anyway. So fuck'em.

I could count, if I felt like it, I could count the number of times that something good has happened over the last three months. It's a pretty small number. But it's not quantity that matters, it's quality.

I mean, how many times do you really need to win the lottery? For some things, even once is enough. And what about ten times or twenty times? And what if it's a gazillion times better than winning the lottery?

I feel so fucking blessed.

I'm thinking that maybe I died again, on that night back in early May. Maybe I died and was immediately reborn. I certainly don't feel like the same person, and I certainly don't act like the same person, and this damn smile I'm always sporting even keeps me from looking like the same person, so maybe I'm not the same person.

If that's the case, then good riddance. That guy was a real buzzkill.

There are so many things that I want to say.

But not here, not now, not yet.

I keep trying to write the same entry. And I can never get it to come out right. It's very frustrating, because I know that I should be able to do it. But it's like there's a locked door in my head, and all of the words that I need are behind that door, and I don't have a key.

Meanwhile, I think that I've allowed myself to become distracted by certain things. By certain inanities and irrelevancies of life.

I fooled myself into thinking that where I was at, where I was going, that it was at least better than standing still in that gray place. Now, I'm seeing the truth again. I'm still wasting my time, and this illusion of progress has been nothing more than another lie.

I haven't been making my way out of this place. I haven't been making any real progress at all. I've been wandering in circles around an oasis that's just another mirage.

I have this thing I do. Like a test, for girls that I meet at Rich O's. A suitable metaphor probably exists, I just can't think of one right now. I was going to use bar, like the kind you jump over, but if I used the word bar and Rich O's in the same paragraph and they didn't mean the same thing, peoples' heads would start to explode. And that would be gross.

So, I observe women. I've probably mentioned that before. But not all of my observations are strictly sexual. Nope, I'm also doing some subconscious evaluating. Some specific evaluating. And over the last several weeks I've regained enough consciousness about myself and the world around me to be able to actually notice what it is that I'm evaluating.

I've been calling it an intelligence test. I've told myself that's what it is. I've told NotHideousGirl that's what it is. But that's not really what it is. Or that's not all that it is. It's much more than that.

I think, if I had to narrow this test down to one crucial element, to the one thing that it tests for more than anything else, that thing would be the ability of a girl to detect bullshit.

This bullshit detector of mine seems to be foolproof. So that's good. What's bad, however, is that it's dependent on a friend of mine being there at Rich O's.

See, he's the source of the bullshit.

And if a girl falls for his bullshit, then she fails my test. Simple as that. She reveals herself as worthless, at least as anyone who could ever be more than a friend.. At least to me. To my friend, not so much. He eats that shit up. That's why he does what he does. Because sometimes it actually works.

I forget where I was going with this.

I can't for the life of me remember enough about Thursday and Friday to write about. So maybe I'll write about last night and that will jog my memory or something.

Got to Rich O's very early because I'd thought that NotHideousGirl was having car trouble again and I was going to ride her around give her a ride around town. So by the time I was ready to leave, and I found that she was already at Rich O's having dinner, it was too late to turn back.

Oh, yeah. I spent all day Saturday alternating between reinstalling XP on my home computer, and hacking away at this sludge-filled pipe under my kitchen. The XP install went okay, though I had a pretty big scare at one point when it looked like I'd lost two disk drives. The plumbing work went okay too. My kitchen sink now drains normally. But, at about 4:00 Saturday I found myself covered in nasty gray sludge that smelled like sewage. Between sawing through the pipe, and then carrying the pipe outside, and then banging the pipe on the ground to loosen the sludge, I basically showered myself with that nasty crap for two hours.

And two hours is about how long I spent in the real shower, later, before I began to feel clean again. While showering, I wondered if the sludge would either (a) kill me, or (b) bestow upon me some super powers. More on that later.

Anyway.

I got to Rich O's a little after 7:00, and had a Wostyntje (308) and talked to NotHideousGirl for a while. She was in a shitty mood though, and she left pretty quickly. I moved to the sofa and vegged out for a while. I had a couple more Wostyntjes (328) and then I had a beer that was new to me.

Avery Karma Ale

(draft) Clear copperish amber. Average head that dissipated quickly. Aroma almost undetectable, but of apple peels and spices. Flavor started out very weak, but as my tongue became accustomed to it, I ended up like this beer a lot. A 5.2% Belgian session beer. Pretty damn cool.

Then I sat on my swing and had a Schlenkerla Marzen (705). Then I went to bed.

---

Let's see, Friday night. Hmmm.

Okay, here's something. My sister Dina and her husband Kenny came in for a while. I had three glasses of Paulaner Hefeweissbier (307) and sat at the island and talked to them for a couple of hours. After that I don't remember what I did. I think I texted some people but they were all being mean and not replying. That would explain my Friday night entry I suppose.

---

Because I had Friday off work, I went in to Rich O's on Thursday too. I think it was boring there, except that at one point my friend Eric came in. Also, there were a lot of hot girls around. I don't remember much about Thursday.

Oh, yeah. I had a new beer Thursday night.

Three Floyds Gumballhead

(draft) Had a sample, and was intrigued enough to have a half-pint next. Hazy yellow in color. Good head and great lacing. Aroma was mostly floral, with a touch of the bubble gum scent that was expected because of the beer's name. Flavor was pretty damn good. Intense, but it never quite got to the point where it was overpowering. Not bitter at all. A little weird. I liked it.

---

Okay, I'm all caught up now.

Ours is a strange and wonderful relationship.

She's strange, and I'm wonderful.

Or maybe vice-versa. I guess it's all a matter of perspective.

Thirty percent of the time, I worry about one scenario. Another thirty percent of the time, I worry about pretty much the opposite scenario.

The rest of the time, everything is fine. Good, in fact.

Forty percent goodness. I've known so-called happily married couples who couldn't make that claim.

I don't feel like writing about last night at Rich O's, or about tonight at Rich O's. Or about my ongoing computer and plumbing woes. I don't really feel like writing about anything at all. But I suppose that I should, so that my fan has something to read.

I did a little experiment the other day in which I, once again, confirmed my hypothesis that people are mean. I don't know why I continue to lie to myself about this very obvious fact of life. But I do. I lie to myself and then I keep trying to prove myself wrong, and I keep ending up disappointed when I prove myself right instead.

I mean, I know deep in my soul that people are mean. So why does it still surprise me?

And the closer I feel to a person, the more disappointed I become when they turn out to be mean. Every fucking time. I don't get it. I should be totally used to this crap by now. I should totally stop trying to prove myself wrong. Arguing with myself is a no-win situation no matter which side ends up being right in the end.

This is a crappy entry. It makes it seem like I'm in a bad mood or something. But I'm not.

You ever want a rewind button for your life?

I want one right now.

I want the last hour of my back.

So, I think that I've mentioned before that my spiffy new kitchen sink doesn't drain very quickly. In fact, it's pretty much a race between draining and evaporating. I've gone to bed at midnight, with a full sink, and gotten up at 9:00 with an almost drained sink.

My plan was to get a plumber over here this Friday to fix the thing. But my recent computer woes caused me to change those plans. I didn't want to spend a zillion dollars on a plumber and then not have any money left over to fix the computer.

So, like I said, I changed my plans.

I went to the hardware store and bought one of those drain snake thingies. Never before have I felt so masculine. Except maybe that one time when I managed to shit out half my body weight.

Then, when I got home, I dismantled the pipes under my sink and, after much trial and error, figured out how to use the snake thingy without somehow burning my house down. Problem was, I extended all 25 feet of that thing into my pipe, and when I retracted it and reassembled the pipes my sink still wouldn't drain.

Luckily for me, my sister's husband Kenny is a Mr. Fixit. I talked to him, and he gave me a couple of ideas for things to try next. First among those ideas was to climb up onto my roof and see if the vent pipe might be clogged. Second among those ideas was to go into my basement and start cutting into pipes.

I chose the easier idea. I climbed up onto my roof with a flashlight and the aforementioned drain snake thingy.

Shining the light into the vent pipe revealed nothing, so I started snaking the, um, snake thingy down into the vent.

Oh, I guess I should say how to use the thing.

1. You loosen this thumbscrew at the thingamabob end and start cramming the coil/wire into the pipe.

2. When you feel an obstruction, you tighten the thingamabob-end thumbscrew and start cranking the handle on the housing doohickey while applying gentle pressure on the coil/wire.

3. When you feel the coil/wire going further into the pipe, go back to step 1.

At least, that's the way it's supposed to happen.

That is not, however, the way I chose to do it.

Nope, what I did was complete step two, loosen the thumbscrew, and then watch in awe as the entire 25 feet of coil/wire slid completely out of the housing doohickey and disappeared down my vent pipe.

Oops.

To review:

1. My kitchen sink still will not drain, so whatever has been clogging its drain line is still clogging its drain line.

2. Also clogging its drain line is a 25-foot length of coil/wire.

3. I suck.

My home computer has died. At least some part of it has died.

So, until I get it repaired and/or replaced, I will be a little harder to reach. Especially to those of you accustomed to IMing me.

*coughStalkerGirlcough*

I'll still have access to my email via my work computer and my blackberry though, so all is not lost.

Depending on how much this crap ends up costing, it could be as long as two weeks before I have a real computer at home again.

I feel like a caveman.

This was a shithead at Pizza Hut today. Harassing all the customers about buying something or signing up for something. I don't know what he wanted, and I didn't care. I just wanted to pick up my pizza and leave without being harassed.