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.

Are you like me? Do you sit around on election day, wishing that you could be a part of the Democratic process, but woefully ignorant about the candidates and their stands on the various issues?

I'm like that every November and every May. But it doesn't stop me from voting. I have a system, see. And I'll reveal it here for the first time.

Just think of some asshole you know. Everybody knows at least one, right? Every family has at least one. Every group of friends has at least one. And most workgroups have dozens.

Now, think about who your favorite asshole would vote for. I've found that it's usually pretty easy. Maybe they've bombarded you with their political views for as long as you've known them. That's how I picked my asshole.

Ewww, that sounded gross.

That's how I chose my asshole.

Okay, that's better.

Then today, all I had to do was go vote the exact opposite of everything my asshole would vote for.

I cancelled out the fucker's votes.

And, to me, the fact that I totally negated that asshole's participation - well it's just fucking hilarious to me. I mean, he lives and breathes politics, and all I do is drink beer and shoot pool. But I, with 30 minutes of effort - including drive and standing in line time - was able to pretty much wipe out his reason for existing in the first place.

So, don't waste another election day. Do something useful. Make a difference. Find yourself an asshole and render him irrelevant.

If you don't know any assholes, I've got news for you. You're probably the asshole.

(response to message)

I think Raindrop was Honeybee's Mom or vice-versa

First of all, I don't know who you are.

Regardless, I'm pretty sure that Honeybee was Sergeant's (and Chief's) mom, and that Raindrop was a Pekinese.

I've been wrong before though.

The creative kind.

My creativity, or whatever it is that I use in its place, has been so limited lately. I should really try to pace myself. So I can get at least one decent journal entry every day.

Easier said than done, I suppose. Like a lot of things.

Like today, I wrote this in an email to my friend RockGirl:

I don't know if it ever really dies. I thought my hope was dead when I found out about [some fucked up shit this past Spring]. It didn't really die though. It just went to sleep. Every now and then its snoring wakes me up from this complacency I've been in.

I think the metaphor of hope as a slumbering beast is a good one. I should have saved it for a journal entry.

Anyway, I've been sick for a few days. Nothing major as it turns out. Just a bit of a fever. I missed a couple of days of work, but that was mostly because I didn't want to infect everyone there. If I'd had the plague, as I'd originally feared, and I'd infected someone at work and they'd subsequently died - well I could kiss my annual performance bonus goodbye.

A while ago I was at SassyGirl's going away party, and at one point I found myself out on her deck with a bunch of kids. Teenagers mostly, though a couple of them might have been in their early 20s.

I found myself all alone with these kids because everyone else, everyone I knew and might have had at least one single solitary thing in common with, they had all taken off to pull some chick's car out of a ditch or something.

I don't remember what we were originally talking about. Probably something stupid. But at one point some of the kids started rambling on and on and on about their various thoughts about love. Such as they were.

Each time one of them would finish making a statement that they thought was profound, all of the kids would look at me. I guess because I was twice as old as any of them, they had subconsciously chosen me as some kind of spiritual leader. Their love coach, if you will.

I think I spent most of the time rolling my eyes.

Kids are so stupid.

Or maybe naive is a better word. Yes, I think it is.

Kids are so fucking naive.

With their fucking hopes and their dreams and their stupid ideals, it's really a wonder that they've managed to live for as long as they have. I mean, most of them seem to think that they can fly. It's truly miraculous that the ground isn't littered with broken bodies.*

I think back to when I was that age. No way was I that fucking stupid. By the time I'd graduated high school, life had already been feeding me shit sandwiches for years. By the time my marriage had ended, I'd learned to enjoy the damn things. By the time LaptopGirl moved away, I craved them like they were manna from Heaven.

But those kids, those kids on that deck that night, there was not a single one of them possessed of a single clue about what love is all about.

Like I said, I spent most of that time on that deck just rolling my eyes. But at one point I did speak up. At one point the drivel being vomited out of a young mouth was just too much to take. At one point I saw the opportunity to say something worthwhile. I took that opportunity. All eyes were upon me. I'd been drinking. One of the girls was hot so I wanted to seem especially wise.

There are very few truly evil people in the world, I said. And, chances are, none of us have ever met any of them, or dated them, or given our virginity to them. But we're still fooled into seeing evil where it doesn't exist. This is a defense mechanism, invented by our hearts and backed-up by our brains. By demonizing those who have hurt us, we further isolate ourselves from the cold harsh reality of life. The reality that we will be hurt, time and time again. By good people. By people who are just like us. When we slap an "evil" label on someone who's hurt us, we fool ourselves into believing that it was a rare event. An anomaly. That it won't happen again, or at least not with the same intensity.

You kids sit here talking about the secrets of love like you've got it them all figured out. Well, you don't. You're not even close. Give yourselves another twenty years and maybe, just maybe, you'll start to develop a clue.

I've lived those twenty years. I've started to sense the clue. I don't have it all figured out yet, but I'm a fuck of a lot closer than you kids are.

Love is about pain, and about learning to accept and rise above and maybe even appreciate that pain.

As long as we can love, we can hurt. As long as we can live, we can love.

And the sad fact is that it hurts to love. Sometimes it hurts a lot. Deal with it. Accept it. Embrace it.

It's still better than the alternative.

* - If you took those last two sentences literally, then you are an idiot and you should go kill yourself now before you pass on your idiot genes to the next generation. If you've already managed to find someone as stupid as you to procreate with then you should probably kill your offspring first.