I'd normally just blame EwokGirl for this, but I'm sure that the fire drill we had at work yesterday morning had something to do with it.

She's right, of course.

I sometimes wonder what I'm doing here.

I mean, I know why I started doing this. I started doing this just because I wanted to keep an online diary. Nothing fancy. Nothing special. Nothing interesting.

But sometime over the past couple of years my reason evolved into something else. Something much more difficult. Something much more rewarding.

At some point I went from wanting to write, to wanting to be a writer. Every now and then I feel like I manage that feat, but not as often as I'd like. And certainly never without some emotion behind it, fueling the words.

So I let my feelings start to flow again, and I wait for inspiration. Beyond that, I wait for new inspiration. And I get nothing but the same old crap that I've already rehashed so often that even I'm bored with it.

And this makes me wonder. It makes me wonder what I'm doing here.

This is a BaggyDraggs.

In four minutes, I'll have gone another birthday without a greeting from her.

It astonishes me that I somehow manage to be surprised by this.

Again.

I'd actually been hoping to leave work early today, because of my birthday.

But nooooooooooooooooooo!

We had a 1.5 hour meeting that magically turned into a 3 hour meeting, so I didn't get to leave until normal time.

After work I went by Rich O's to see SassyGirl, who I didn't get to see over the weekend at my pre-birthday thingy because she had to work.

I had a couple glasses of t Smisje Wostyntje Mustard Ale (74).

I got a Happy Birthday text message from HatGirl!

Yay!

And then, HatGirl called me!

Double-Yay!

And then, after a while, HatGirl came into Rich O's.

Triple-Yay!

We didn't talk much though, and she left rather abruptly.

I finished her Guinness (1097).

Then I went to Pizza Hut and then I called HatGirl to make sure she wasn't too pissed at me (To be fair, I had warned her that my recent reversion would turn me into a dick.) and then I came home.

Happy Birthday to me!

Okay, so the house in the lower left is mine, and the house in the upper left - two houses up from me - that house isn't there any more.

Pretty messed up.

Weird.

The house two houses down from me is burning.

At least that's what we all assume. The six fire trucks and the four police cars are sort of a dead giveaway. They've blocked off the street at my driveway, and again about a mile down the road, so you can't actually see any fire. A couple of hours ago the smoke was impressive though.

So I went down to Buckhead's for my birthday dinner. I was alone, but I kinda had a point to make, so I did.

With my meal I had some Newcastle (1854).

I came home to find nothing changed except that there's no more smoke. All of the fire trucks are still there, and the road is still blocked off. I walked out and asked the cop in front of my driveway if everyone got out okay, and he said that they did, so that's good. I don't know those people but their cat used to come and eat some of Spook's food back when Spook was alive.

Just a couple of things that I didn't write about already.

In December, when I was in Las Vegas, My friend Eric and his wife were, unbeknownst to me, also in Las Vegas. This sucks that they were there and I didn't know about it. It would have been so much fun to hang out and do touristy stuff with them!

One of the nice things about this, um, emotional reversion I've done is that not much can really bother me. It's given me a nice sense of perspective. Stuff that a couple of weeks ago would have pissed me off or made me sad - it is all nothing when I compare it to what I've already been though, and what I'm going through again.

So, world, throw your worst at me, you fucker. I can take it.

Having said that, it is a little annoying how I continue to find myself attracted to women that are inappropriate or unavailable. This is a defense mechanism that I'd really like to shake off.

I guess that's it.

(Part two)

Up to this point, we'd all still been sitting in the red room, but maintaining watchful eyes for any other seats to open up. I still didn't know who was going to show up, and the red room - even with both tables - will hold about ten people and that's it.

Once a couple of strangers (ha ha, take that, FutureDude!) left the island we moved there and took advantage of the more compact grouping to bullshit about various fluff.

I showed everyone my new rock.

My next beer was a yummy Weihenstephaner Hefeweissbier (510), which has I guess switched to twelve-ounce bottles for now. I actually had two more of these (534).

At one point my friend Eric came in. I hadn't seen him in like a million years. His wife had to stay home with a sick child, so Eric ended up completing the attendee list. So, to review:

1. My lovely self


2. SpoonsGirl


3. SpoonsGirl's husband SirTalksALot


4. My sister Dina


5. Dina's Fiance Kenny


6. My oldest friend Eric

1. MusicalHippyDude


2. GlassesGirl


3. HotRedHead


4. This other hot girl that turned out to have the worst taste in ex-husbands I've ever seen

1. HatGirl


2. LuckyFucker


3. SassyGirl


4. SassyBoy


5. TacoBell


6. SpikeBoy


7. My cousin Jeff


8. DooRagGirl

Eventually, as nights tend to do, this one wound down. Eventually it was just me and Eric. I had myself a half-pint of Guinness (1092). We were joined, at various intervals, by NoNicknameDude and ElPresidente and FirstLady, though they were there for their own reasons - not for my pre-birthday thingy.

Several people wanted to go over to Jack's once Rich O's closed. Eric was one of those people, and because it's so rare to see Eric anymore I agreed to go as long as nobody tried to force me to drink shots.

(SCRIBBLERESQUE PARENTHETICAL THOUGHT: There's still only one person one Earth that I'll do shots for, and her name is Holly, and she wasn't there last night. I miss Holly.)

So Eric and I and NoNicknameDude and HotRedHead all went over to Jack's. I had a couple of Diet Cokes, and we played a few games of pool. We ended up closing the place down. I'd planned on going to White Castle but the temperature was in the single digits so I came straight home instead.

One of the more unpleasant, but not at all unexpected, repercussions of having friends and family gather at Rich O's for an occasion like last night's pre-birthday thingy is that I'm roped into being the beer guru for the evening. At least for those VPs in the group that are, as Roger would say, flavor-impaired.

Of course, I'm the logical choice for this assignment, but that doesn't mean that I have to enjoy it.

So, first things first. DooRagGirl left me a voicemail at about 6:00, suggesting that I call Rich O's and tell them how many people I was expecting and ask them to reserve some seating for me. I didn't do that because (a) I didn't know how many people would be there, and (b) To ask for reserved seats, in last-minute fashion, for a Saturday night, in that ever-shrinking smoking section, well it's just not something I'd do. I may be evil, but I'm not an asshole.

I arrived at about 7:30, sporting my new WTF? t-shirt that RockGirl had included in my birthday package. It did shrink quite nicely, RockGirl. Anyway, the only people from my group there were SpoonsGirl and her husband, who were sitting in the red room. I was immediately asked to choose a beer for SpoonsGirl that was not bitter, or hoppy, are those the same thing?

Having my priorities in order, I went up to the end of the bar to order myself a beer first. ActualGeorge was sitting there, and we talked for a bit. I mentioned that it was my pre-birthday thingy, and that there were an awful lot of strangers clogging up the living room area. This is my standard gripe lately, as you all probably know, but for whatever reason FutureDude decided to give me shit about it. He told me that those people were there all the time, and that it pissed him off when I called people strangers. Gee, I wonder how he'd have felt if I'd called them assholes or fuckers like I usually do. My definition of a stranger is a pretty basic one: If I've never seen them before in my life, then guess what? They're strangers.

(SCRIBBLERESQUE PARENTHETICAL THOUGHT: Also, if you crowd into the living room area, and you pile several hundred coats onto the throne, thereby eliminating that seat from the already small number of seats in the place - if, in other words, you don't have enough people to completely take over the area so you use coats to prevent anyone from sitting there and breaking the flow of your little circle-jerk or whatever you're doing - then you most definitely deserve to be called something worse than strangers.)

So, that was just great, FutureDude was on the rag, and I'd managed to piss him off, and I still hadn't even ordered my beer.

Still having my priorities in order, I took care of the biggest problem first. I ordered myself a t Smisje Mustard Ale (54).

By talking to SpoonsGirl and FutureDude, I gathered that she had already asked for a sample of almost everything Rich O's had on tap, and that she was probably about to send FutureDude out to the local liquor store to pick up more stuff to sample, when I came in.

Okay, so the problem wasn't me. Or it wasn't all me. SpoonsGirl was sampling them to death. I pitched a couple of proposals to her - she had already sampled and dismissed them. So I had her try some of my mustard ale and she liked it enough to order her own glass. So, yay! One down.

My sister Dina and her fiancé came in at about this time, and I was once again pressed into service. Dina didn't want to like anything either, but she was eventually, no thanks to me, able to find Lindemann's Peach tolerable enough to drink.

(SCRIBBLERESQUE PARENTHETICAL THOUGHT: When trying a new beer, it is sometimes necessary to do more than simply dip your tongue into it. Beer is meant to be experienced, from the aroma through the flavor to the finish. And sometimes it takes more than one drink before the full experience can be appreciated. To dismiss a fine beer like Bell's Kalamazoo Stout after only a token sip, well it just seems wrong to me.)

My next beer was what was left of Dina's Kalamazoo Stout (354).

(To be continued)