(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.

I need to make up a couple of nicknames. I'm drawing a bit of a blank though. Maybe I should let them pick their own nicknames, if I ever see them again. For now, I'm going to go with HotGirl and HotGirlsHotCousin. Not very creative, but descriptive.

Friday I left work a little early so I could go buy some booze for HotGirl. I was buying some top-shelf tequila so I went to this Party Mart place because it has a huge selection. Even though I was there for tequila, I went straight to the beer section.

I ended up buying about $100 worth of Belgian beers, most of which I've never heard of, before I even got close to the tequila section.

So that gives me something to look forward to on the dark and lonely Winter nights.

The deal was that I was supposed to meet HotGirl and her cousin at Rich O's. After a quick meal at Wendy's I got to Rich O's a little before 5:00.

It was a typical after-work crowd except for one chick who I suspected might be HotGirlsHotCousin. She was at the bar fending off potential suitors. I sat in the throne and ordered a Rogue Smoke (320) which is finally back on tap after being in the bullpen for a million years or so. The damn hopheads and their damn hoppy beers had all the taps used up.

After a while, HotGirl called me to tell me that she was running late. She also said that her cousin might already be there. Since I'd already suspected that, I hollered out "HotGirlsHotCousin?!?" into the crowd. Sure enough, the chick at the bar turned around and it was indeed her. She came over and sat on the loveseat and we talked and got to know each other a little before HotGirl arrived. She described herself as being "just like SpoonsGirl" - SpoonsGirl being a mutual friend.

When HotGirl arrived she was, as promised, wearing her DaveFest Shirt. That's still so damn surreal. I highly recommend that everyone reading this have their own beer festival and have t-shirts made. It's beyond cool.

For a while I sat on the throne and HotGirl sat on the sofa and HotGirlsHotCousin sat on the loveseat and a few random guys had been drawn moth-like to the area and were scattered about. At one point I returned from the restroom and HotGirlsHotCousin had taken the throne. This will hereafter be known as The Greatest Thing That Ever Happened Up To That Point. So I sat on the sofa between HotGirl and one of the moths.

This was probably about when I had a second Rogue Smoke (340).

I talked with HotGirl and HotGirlsHotCousin and had quite an enjoyable time watching the moths beat themselves senseless. I switched to Diet Coke for a while because I'm a lightweight, then I had a Smithwick's (1292).

There was much jostling of position as the moths tried to get as close as they could without getting burned. At one point during the jostling HotGirlsHotCousin moved over to my left side. This will hereafter be known as The Greatest Thing That Ever Happened Period as it left me squeezed in between two of the prettiest girls to ever set foot in Rich O's. It was totally a Dave sandwich.

There were pictures taken, so there is proof of this, but I doubt that I'll be posting said pics here because I somehow managed to look fat and stoned in every one of them.

I was so not stoned.

(to be continued)

Go ahead, take a look around. I've got nothing to hide.

You probably won't find what you're expecting to find, but that's okay. I doubt that, right now, I doubt that you even have any expectations except those given to you. I don't care about those, and neither should you.

Ask your own questions.

Find your own answers.

They're all here.

Scattered. Hiding in plain sight among the drivel.

I was dicking around with this today, showing a coworker the route to the expressway, and I noticed that the resolution seemed to have improved. Intrigued, I directed the application to a little town that had always been nothing more than a blur of pixels.

Now it's much better. I guess Google Earth has updated its database with new images.

Very cool.

I was just walking down the street, minding my own business, and two random hot girls stopped me.

"Excuse me," one of the random hot girls said in broken English. "Please where is Louiville Slugger?"

"Just start at my feet and work your way up," I said. "You can't miss it."

No I did not really say that. Years of experience have told me that random hot girls have no sense of humor, and I can only assume that random hot foreign girls are no different. So I gave them real directions to the place.

Tonight I was looking for something in my old emails. I didn't find what I was looking for, but I did find this:

Reminds me of this girl I dated briefly right after my divorce. She had the unfortunate name of [same as my ex-wife], and she was kind of a [use your imagination]. The latter is the reason that we broke up. Anyway, one night shortly after we broke up, I came home from pool league and [the girl] and her friend had filled my entire living room, kitchen, hallway, bathroom, and bedroom, up to a height of about four feet, with balloons.

It was really incredible. They must have started the minute I left for league and worked non-stop for several hours. I guess my roommate had let them in.

Ha, that just made me smile to think about. Maybe I should write an entry about it.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure that were I to think back I'd be very hard-pressed to ever come up with anything that anyone has ever done for me that was as nice as that. I mean, it really lifted my spirits during a time which was up to that point the saddest time in my life. And the amazing thing was that it wasn't a ploy to get me to take her back. She did it just because she wanted me to feel better. We were finished before we'd ever really started, but it was still important to her that I be happy for a while.

It worked. Even though I had to spend a couple of hours popping balloons, and even though I had to buy a new vacuum cleaner after the first one burned out from trying to deal with all the balloon fragments, it really worked.

Thinking about this tonight, I tried to recall the nicest thing I'd ever done for someone else. And not just the nicest thing, but the most selfless thing as well.

I can think of lots of little things. I am a decent person after all. But I'm having a hard time coming up with anything that's nearly as impressive as those balloons.

This one time a couple of years ago I overheard an elderly couple getting bad directions from a gas station employee. I followed them to their car and told them that I hadn't been able to help but overhear, and that I was going their way, and that they could just follow me to their Son's wedding rehearsal. I then drove 30 minutes out of my way so they could follow me. They said I was a real good Samaritan.

Right now, that's the best I can come up with.

I can do better than that. Perhaps I have done better than that, but the memory eludes me. Either way, I want to do something nice. I want to do something for someone that makes them smile when they think about it in 20 years.

Maybe nice and selfless can't be done on purpose. Maybe, by stating this goal, I turn it into a selfish one.

I dunno.

Time for bed.

That's what Roger, the owner of Rich O's, told me I provide with my 'blog.

Apparently, if I bitch and moan about the crowd in his place, then Roger knows that he's having a lucrative night.

And, if I'm happy about the crowd, or if I don't mention it at all, then Roger starts worrying about how he'll fund his retirement if business doesn't pick back up.

I thought it was funny. I didn't say that anyone else would.

This entry brought to you by two fucking yummy bottles of fucking yummy Gulden Draak (237).

This is pretty long, but it's not drivel.

Do whatever you want with that information. Read it, or not. I'm fucking writing it anyway.

I was sitting in this meeting this morning, listening to this lady drone on and on and on about our personality test scores and how they relate to our happiness and our suitability for certain activities. At one point, the lady was talking about numerical reasoning or some shit like that. As I looked at the big bold numeral 10 on my sheet, and I listened to what the lady was saying about how the higher the score a person had, the happier one would be in a technical line of work, I was suddenly struck by the absurdity of her words.

Her words just didn't ring true to me. They just seemed wrong.

That's not right, I thought. I may work in a technical field, but it's not who I am. It's not what I'm most suited for. It's not what I want to be. It's not what I'm supposed to be.

This whole personality test exercise was supposed to give me insight about myself and how I think and interact with others. It was supposed to be a good thing, for me and for the team I'm part of, and for the company I work for. It was supposed to make me a better worker.

Oops.

I sat there and listened to this lady rattle on about team dynamics and the need for balance and blah blah blah, and I realized that none of it mattered to me. None of it was relevant to me, or to who I am.

I am not a technical person, my resume and training and experience notwithstanding.

I am a writer.

Stop laughing.

I didn't say I was a great writer, or even a particularly good writer. But does a person have to be good at what they're supposed to do, or is it important only that they do it?

The latter, I think.

Anyway, I used to write. I used to write actual meaningful entries. So what if they were only meaningful to me? I enjoyed the writing, and even more, I enjoyed reading what I'd written. To vicariously relive my own life and my own thoughts and my own feelings through my own written words - that's a pleasure that I've enjoyed for as long as I can remember. When I've allowed myself to do it.

I enjoy it, so I'm fucking going to do it right now.

If you don't like it, then stop reading. But, I have to ask, if you don't like it then what are you doing here in the first place?

---

I've written about how it began. The struggle that had been lost before it had even started. The stubborn refusal to accept that there were things inside me that I could not control. The night that I died. How I was reborn into a world of pain.

I've written at length about how it progressed, and about how it stagnated and withered and regained strength. About how it seemed to abandon me in a gray place or on a lonely beach.

I've written about the beginning, and I've written about the middle, but I've never written about the end.

That is something I'm about to change. That is an injustice I'm about to correct.

If you don't want to know, then stop reading. I don't know how I can be any more clear than that.

---

I was sitting on the couch at Rich O's. I'd just arrived a few minutes earlier, and I was still getting settled. My first beer and cigarette of the night had barely been touched. I was talking with UplandWheatDude.

"What's wrong with you?" he asked me.

"Nothing," I replied.

"You seem pissed," he said.

"No, just a little tired I guess," I answered.

"Oh," he said. "I thought you might be pissed because LaptopGirl is in town."

I went numb.

"Oh. Is she in town?" I asked. I wanted to run. I wanted to run and never stop running, but I didn't know where to go.

"Yeah," he answered. "At least, she was in here on Monday."

Twenty seconds later, she walked in the door.

Later that night, in another journal, I wrote this entry:

If I don't write something tonight, I'll probably never forgive myself.

Problem is, I'm not sure what to write.

Anything I write will be inadequate to describe what I'm feeling. Even though I'm feeling nothing, the depths of the nothingness that I feel cannot be expressed in words.

Not by me, anyway.

I had a bad feeling about tonight. This is somewhat normal for me. I'd like to say that tonight, that tonight I felt especially apprehensive, that I knew before I even left my house that tonight would be special. I'd like to say those things, but I won't.

I won't lie to you. Tonight, it was just a regular bad feeling. No better and no worse than all of the other bad feelings I've had every night for almost two years. Just a feeling, a knowledge, a certainty, that I wasn't ready for what might happen. But there was nothing special about tonight. Nothing at all.

I saw you tonight. I saw you tonight for the first time in almost a year. I saw you tonight, and I didn't even know it was you until you turned around and someone pointed you out to me.

We never spoke. We never even looked at each other at the same time, as far as I was able to determine. We simply existed in the same place at the same time.

Strangers.

No, wait. That's not right. Not strangers. Something else.

Something else, because I didn't just carry on as if nothing unusual was happening. I tore my eyes away from you, and I bit my tongue, and I fought back my tears.

Something else, because you didn't fail to see me. You sat five feet away from me, and you ignored me.

I looked at you, when I could. You're a bit heavier now. You're tan has faded. Your hair is shorter. Your smile is as beautiful as ever.

But something was missing. I looked, when I could, and I never did see what I most expected to see. I never did find what I most wanted to find and needed to find.

There were always sparkles before.

Tonight, there weren't any sparkles.

Tonight, there was nothing.

And that's what I'm feeling after seeing your beautiful face again after being denied it for so long. And that's what I'm feeling after hearing your voice after being denied it for so long. And that's what I'm feeling after missing you and needing you and loving you for so long that I can't remember a time when I didn't miss you and love you and need you.

Nothing.

This will change. I'm told that you'll be in town for several weeks. I will not hide from you, so I will see you again. Perhaps, one of these nights, you'll see me. Perhaps you'll acknowledge me. Perhaps you'll speak to me. Perhaps I'll get lucky and die at that moment, while the sound of your sweet voice still reverberates in my head.

Perhaps there'll be sparkles.

The next time I saw her, I apologized for being such a baby.

The time after that, she sat next to me, because there was no other place to sit, and we talked for a bit. We talked about DaveFest. I told her that I wished she could have been there for it. I told her that I missed her.

The next time I saw her, I wanted to talked to her like we had in the old days. But it wasn't meant to be. There were too many other people, too many complications, too many obstacles. I watched and I waited for an opportunity, but none ever came.

She said goodbye to me while she said goodbye to everyone else. I was incidental. A face in the crowd.

But you know what?

It was okay.

I'd gotten what I needed.

What I wanted, that had fluctuated over the days and weeks and months and years. What I wanted had waxed and waned far more often than the Moon which I used to imagine us sharing ever had. But what I needed, what I needed, that never changed. And what I needed, I was given on a wonderful night in September of 2006.

Fuck all that other stuff. It's too late for any of that. Sometimes I think that it was always too late for any of that. But the thing that I needed, I got.

I got a little piece of that friendship back. Not all of it, for all of it is probably impossible. But I got enough. An inkling of a hint of a suggestion is all I got. But it was enough. Enough to make it all worthwhile.

I once wrote, I just want two more seconds. I believe that I'll be destroyed in those two seconds, but it would be worth it.

When I wrote those words, I meant them. Two seconds would have had to be enough, because I felt that two seconds was all I would ever get. I would not live to see a third second.

Well, things change. Circumstances change. People change.

Tonight, in October of 2006, I still want those two seconds. But tonight, in October of 2006, I don't see them as the poignant and overdue end to a sad story.

Tonight, I see those two seconds as the continuation of a new beginning.

I'm getting my friend back, and that's all that really matters. And the thing is - that's all that's ever really mattered. Every hope and dream that I'd ever had about anything more just muddied the waters and clouded my judgement. Beneath everything else, and towering over everything else, I missed my friend.

---

It's been tough tonight, writing this. To put a label on something brings, after all, a risk of error and exposure. I've been wrong before. More often than not, in fact. I suppose that I could be wrong again, but I don't think so. Not this time.

This time, there is a calmness about me that I haven't felt for a very long time. It's pretty disconcerting. Like I was born in a maelstrom and I'm suddenly facing clear skies for the first time in my life. It's pretty fucking weird is what it is.

This long nightmare is over. What a strange and wonderful and frightening thing that is to say.

The end. What a delightful tragedy those two words are.

Had to update the Friday plans part.

Stolen from Ella

When was the last time you shaved?
This morning before work.

Explain what ended your last relationship.
She wanted me to violate my principles and hurt someone that I care about. When I refused, she took it as proof that I loved the other person more than I loved her.

What were you doing this morning at 8 a.m.?
That was just about when I was pulling out of my garage.

What were you doing 15 minutes ago?
I went to this break area outside. To get back in, you have to badge yourself into the building, then push a button to get through a door, then badge yourself into the elevator, then badge yourself into another building, then take another elevator up to where I sit. It's easier to break out of jail than it is to get to my desk.

Are you any good at math?
I guess I'm pretty good at it. It interests me a lot more now that it did when I was in school.

Your prom night?
My girlfriend and I went to different schools, and they had stupid some rule where people from other schools couldn't go to our proms. So we just went down to the river and fucked.

Do you have any famous ancestors?
Noah?

Have you had to take a loan out for school?
Nope. The Air Force paid for my schooling.

Do you know the words to the song on your myspace profile?
No, I'm straight.

Last thing received in the mail?
I hardly ever check my mail. I got a book from RockGirl a while ago.

How many different beverages have you had today?
Just a bottle of Diet Vanilla Pepsi.

Do you ever leave messages on people’s answering machine?
Sometimes. Do you always ask such stupid questions?

Who did you lose your CONCERT virginity to?
Is that the same thing as my first concert? Uncle Ted, sometime around 1977 I think.

Do you draw your name in the sand when you go to the beach?
No, I'm straight.

What’s the most painful dental procedure you’ve had?
Had a tooth pulled a few years ago. Getting an injection in the roof of my mouth was the most pain I've ever felt, dental or otherwise.

What’s out your back door?
My deck. Dead hookers.

Any plans for Friday night?
I usually like to just do what comes naturally. That usually means that I go to Rich O's. But this weekend I'm on-call so everything's up in the air. UPDATE: This one hot girl just called me and so now I'm going to Rich O's after work to see her and her cousin. The hot girl has promised that she will wear her DaveFest shirt.

Do you like what the ocean does to your hair?
You mean like get it wet? Comes with the territory I suppose.

Have you ever received one of those big tins of 3 different popcorns?
We've had them at work a couple of times. Does that count?

Have you ever been to a planetarium?
My high school had a planetarium in it. So yes.

Do you re-use towels after you shower?
I have like five towels. Usually I do laundry often enough that I don't reuse dirty towels.

Some things you are excited about?
I'm going to Las Vegas in six weeks. Yay!

What is your favorite flavor of JELLO?
Jell-O is disgusting.

Describe your keychain(s)?
It's a metal thingy with keys on it. It jingles when I shake it.

Where do you keep your change?
I keep it in multiple piles all over my house. This is to deter thieves. Sometimes I put it all in a big water jug, then at other times I take it all to the bank and turn it into real money.

When was the last time you spoke in front of a large group of people?
Probably back when I was running a pool league and I'd meet with potential players.

What kind of winter coat do you own?
A green one. I usually wear a brown leather jacket though.

What was the weather like on your graduation day?
I think it was a pretty nice day, but the wind coming off the glacier was chilly.

Do you sleep with the door to your room open or closed?
My cats do not allow closed doors in the house. They barely tolerate closed cabinets and drawers.