Tonight, for a change of pace, I had a beer. This was the fourth bottle that I took to BadPickleGirl's house on Friday. We didn't get to it then, so I got to it tonight.

Bluegrass Mephistopheles Metamorphosis (25)

(bottle) No foam at all. I mean none. I've seen tap water with a bigger head. Other than that, poured a slightly hazy orange. Taste was, as expected, fairly flat and generic. Yeasty and bland in flavor, this beer did grow on me as time went by. I'd love to try this in draft form someday. Maybe there'll be some fizz then.

Meanwhile, I sit here with three ideas for blog entries. All of them good ideas, but none of them exciting enough that I'm going to start typing them up now.

I think, instead of trying to tackle any of my new entry ideas, I think I'll just quote from my friend NotHideousGirl's blog:

Dave Siltz is the weirdest normal person I know, and I love him for it.

So, isn't that just the sweetest thing?

In response to that, I'll say this:

Kat is the most beautiful girl I know, who doesn't act like she's beautiful, and I love her for it.

Also, today I didn't talk to BadPickleGirl at all, and that bothered me a little. Uh oh.

Finally, my sister Neisha accused me the other day of killing and eating my cat Nugget, since she hasn't seen him in years and years. As proof that Nugget still lives, I present this picture (taken tonight) of him in all his fatness, along with the scratching post that he's slowly but surely shredding to bits:

This will probably be a long entry. It will probably also be boring. But a lot of stuff happened that I want to record.

Today is the eighth anniversary of my dad's death and, since Indiana bars are closed on Sundays, I went last night. I went to this little dive called The Hitching Post where Dad used to hang out so I could have a Falls City beer in remembrance.

I walked into the place at about 7:30. There was one guy slumped over the bar, and one bartender smoking a cigarette and watching a football game on TV. She looked at me when I came in and asked, "Falls City, right?"

I was pretty fucking impressed that she remembered me from a year ago, when I'd come in for the same reason.

So I had my Falls City (36) straight out of the can, the way Dad would drink it. It was pretty gross, but that wasn't the point. I didn't really get a chance to see if I could pick up any vibes from Dad because the bartender kept talking to me about her dad being in the hospital.

I left after that one beer.

BadPickleGirl had been telling me about this little diner in New Albany that I should go to. She said I'd be sure to get good ideas for blog content. Well I drove past the place, but I didn't go in. I'll go there someday with BadPickleGirl if she wants.

After a quick meal at Wendy's, I got to Rich O's at 8:30 or so.

The first several minutes were pretty chaotic.

When I arrived I went straight to the restroom. There was a pretty girl who looked very familiar sitting in the front area.

There were also a bunch of special people holding some kind of special people function in the special people area.

After purging the last of the Falls City from my system, I attempted to walk through the front area to get into Rich O's proper. I tried to get a better look at the pretty girl, but this one chick from work saw me and screamed out my name.

I gave her a nod and continued walking, but another girl saw me and screamed out my name and jumped up and threw herself at me.

It was CanadianGirl! She used to work at my company up until a couple of years ago. Now she lives in Omaha. She's back for a visit.

So I'm standing there talking to CanadianGirl and I realized who the pretty girl was. She also used to work at my company. I think she moved to Columbus. She used to be CanadianGirl's boss. So that mystery was solved.

So I'm still standing there talking to CanadianGirl and I feel a tap on my shoulder. I turned to see LuckyFucker and HatGirl making their way around me and going into Rich O's proper. I called out that I'd be in there with them shortly.

So I'm still standing there talking to CanadianGirl and I feel another tap on my shoulder. I turned around to see MisunderstoodGirl. Yay! I talked to her for a good minute or two. I asked her if she knew how to get in touch with SassyBoy. My thinking was that maybe I could call SassyBoy and see if he'd heard anything from SassyGirl since she fled the country. Well MisunderstoodGirl didn't know SassyBoy's number but she had heard through various channels that SassyGirl and JauntyGirl were doing just fine traveling around Europe. So that was a load off my mind as I'd been getting a little worried about those two.

Then I went back to talking to CanadianGirl for a minute or two. I guess she doesn't like Omaha as much as I'd liked it when I lived there. Her boyfriend and her aren't together anymore. This was her first visit back to Rich O's since she moved.

So I was standing there talking with CanadianGirl and I heard a "Hello Dave" from behind me. It was CoffeeDude making his way into Rich O's proper. I quickly excused myself from CanadianGirls grasp and followed him in. I needed to make sure that, if CoffeeDude was going to run HatGirl off with his "witty" comments again, that I at least got to spend some time with her first.

I always say, timing is everything.

Inside Rich O's proper, HatGirl was on the phone. I could tell that something bad was happening, and I was really afraid that she was going to cry. There was no way I'd be able to deal with seeing HatGirl cry, so I left her in LuckyFucker's care and went up to the bar to order my beer.

I ordered myself a yummy Gulden Draak (247)

I went and sat on the loveseat. HatGirl had gone off to the restroom or outside to finish her phone call or something. LuckyFucker said that HatGirl had been in a good mood, but that she'd suddenly developed a shitty mood. He filled me in on the reason for the change. I half-expected HatGirl and LuckyFucker to just leave, but they didn't. When HatGirl came back in, she was at least smiling.

HatGirl!

Yay!

After the chaos of those first five minutes, the rest of the night was rather uneventful. The place was packed with strangers. I did my best to just sit and talk with HatGirl and LuckyFucker, but I was accosted by CanadianGirl a few times, and by CoffeeDude a few times, and by that one chick from work a few times. My mission for the night was to do my best to keep HatGirl from crying. I did my part by making sure that CoffeeDude was kept so busy with other conversations that he wouldn't feel the need to jump into ours and say something inappropriate.

At about the time I ordered my third beer of the night, a Smithwick's (1368), this one dude sitting at the end of the sofa decided to take the picture of me and SassyGirl down. Why did he do this? I have no idea. But after about an hour of trying to get it back on the wall, he gave up and they ended up hanging it up in another location. The new location is directly above the throne. It looks better there. HatGirl took a picture of it in its new location but I have yet to figure out how to get the picture out of my blackberry. If I figure it out I'll insert it here.

At 10:30 or so, the group of current and former coworkers left for greener pastures. I was groped a few more times by CanadianGirl. She's always been a very friendly drunk.

And, just like that, the place was quiet.

I had another Smithwick's (1388) and talked to HatGirl and LuckyFucker for a few more minutes before they went home.

I spent a few minutes talking with CoffeeDude, then I came home myself at 12:30 or so.

I was just thinking about people that suck, and about how they outnumber the people that don't suck by a very wide margin.

The world has turned upside-down, inside-out.

How did things get to be this way?

Did it happen while we slept?

If so, then I wish I'd never woken up.

Does that make me weird?

a-dore (e-dor)
verb
1. To worship as God or a god.
2. To regard with deep, often rapturous love.
3. To like very much.

I think that number three is the correct definition here. Neither of the other two are correct. To tell the truth, number three doesn't seem quite right either . It seems too perfunctory. Too abrupt.

If I were to say that I adore HatGirl, and you were to translate that to mean that I like HatGirl very much, well it just wouldn't be quite be right.

I mean, I like the curry fries that the pub sells very much. I like banana milkshakes from Polly's Freeze very much. I like the way my cats purr when I pet them very much.

But, do I adore any of those things?

Nope.

But I do adore HatGirl.

Let me be clear - this is not based on any physical attraction. It is not a crush thing. It has, believe it or not, nothing at all to do with how pretty she is. I cannot stress that enough.

It's much more than that, and much less than that.

Let's try another definition.

a-dor-a-ble (e-dor-e-bul)
adjective
1. Delightful, lovable, and charming.
2. Worthy of adoration.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

HatGirl is, quite simply, adorable.

And I hope that she reads this. And I hope that it makes her feel a little bit better.

I arrived at BadPickleGirl's house promptly at 8:45. This was quite an amazing feat because I was sure I was lost. I'd written down directions, and at one point I'd written one-tenth mile. This was clearly an error as the actual distance was a thousaand million bazillion miles.

I did my best to look casual as I walked up to the door. I guess I did okay because she waved me in.

After a few niceties, we got down to business.

Unibroue La Terrible

(bottle) Very dark, almost black. A smallish head that faded almost instantly. It had a very dry aroma and flavor. More like wood than the fruit I'd been expecting. A very good beer though. It certainly didn't taste like it was 10.5% ABV.

BadPickleGirl had chosen that bottle to be first because of the bottle. That's the same reason I'd bought the beer in the first place. It's a very attractive bottle which has defied all attempts to be photographed.

The next bottle was another new one for me:

Duinen Tripel

(bottle) Slightly hazy orange. Quite fizzy in both aroma and flavor. Hints of apples, expected for the style, but the fizz was the predominate characteristic. Reminiscent of champagne. Good, but not great.

Of the four bottles I'd brought with me, three were strangers. I had, however, brought one ringer. A beer that I discovered a few weeks ago but one that I hadn't gotten around to reviewing yet. I think that, by the time the Duinen was gone, BadPickleGirl and I both knew that the third bottle would be the last. So I chose the one that I knew was yummy.

Koningshoeven Quadrupel Trappist Ale

(bottle) Cloudy dark red. An intense fruit aroma, with a mixture of dark cherries and apples and citrus. Easily one of the best beers I've ever had. Fucking yummy.

As it turned out, we didn't finish that bottle. We got about halfway through it and BadPickleGirl moved over to her other couch and stretched out. I believe that her exact words were, "That last beer sent me into Led Zeppelin oblivion."

Well, seeing her stretched out on the couch threatened to sent me into another sort of oblivion. So there.

But I'm a gentleman, so instead of sitting and staring, I spent some time trying to cram the cork back into that last bottle, then I put it in her fridge. Then I gave BadPickleGirl a hug, thanked her for the lovely evening, and came home at about 1:00.

This morning, RockGirl put bait on her breath and sent me an How was the date? email. My response, in part, was as follows:

There was no slaking. We just sat and talked and drank some bottles of Belgian beers. I got to know her a little better, which is what I really wanted to do. She's nice.

I told BadPickleGirl that I probably wouldn't write about what we were doing. That this damned ever-increasing respect for privacy would, most likely, cause me to censor myself to the point where there might not even be an entry about what we did.

I told her about how I'd gotten HotRedHead in trouble with my writing, and that I didn't want to risk anything like that happening with BadPickleGirl.

But she would hear none of that. She insisted that I could write whatever I wanted. That I should write what happened. She said some crap about journalistic responsibility I think.

So, last night, BadPickleGirl and I gave our tongues and our lips a real workout. On her new leather couch, with candlelight flickering and music playing softly, we tasted things we had longed to taste for a long time.

To be continued.

Ha ha.

The world can breathe a collective sigh of relief.

My gutters are now clean.

Not clean enough to eat off of, but what kind of a sick fuck would want to do that anyway?

Today we had to do a bunch of team-building crap for work.

First, we did a hole of miniature gold. I got it in two shots, which was as well as could be expected. I got three points for that.

Next, we did this stupid bean bag toss thing. I got a zero because all four of my tosses slid right over the fucking hole and off the board.

Next, we shot free throws. Now I can shoot free throws pretty well. I bet I can make them about 90% of the time. But not without some practice throws first. So I got another zero as both of my shots bounced off the front of the rim.

Next, we did this stupid pumpkin bowling thing. We had to bowl a pumpkin and knock over some two-liter bottles. My first roll knocked six bottles down, and my second roll veered to the right and hit a wall. I got six points.

Finally, the last event was horseshoes. I'm pretty good at that too, but again, not without some practice. I think both of my shots hit the peg, but they both ended up too far away, so I got another zero.

For those of you keeping score at home, I had nine points out of a possible forty-four.

My team ended up winning the overall championship, no thanks to me.

I suck.

I don't really know what's going on here.

I try not to get my hopes up. Failing that, I try to at least keep those hopes a secret. From myself as much as from everyone else.

The challenge comes from the fact that I can't appear to be indifferent either. That would be even worse. Much worse.

It's a big mysterious game, and it's been kind of fun so far. But not as much fun as it was when I was in grade school. The first time I played.

At least, back then, I could have someone pass a note on the playground. And then I'd know if that particular game was worth playing.

Now it's different. There are no more checkboxes with yes and no written next to them. Now the questions are more complicated, and the answers more indistinct.

Yes, I'm pretty sure it was more fun back when I was a kid. It was definitely easier.