Tonight, I was in a strange mood.

Not good, not particularly bad. I guess nostalgic would be a good description. Makes sense, anyway.

I tried a couple of times to call SpikeBoy to see if he was in the mood to do something besides Rich O's tonight, but I couldn't get in touch with him. Oh well, can't say I didn't try.

So what I ended up doing first, to help make up for not going to the cemetery today, was go to The Hitching Post and have myself a Falls City (24) in Dad's honor. Straight from the can like a real man would drink it.

Disgusting.

I talked to the bartender for a bit, told her what I was doing there, but she'd only been working there for a couple of years so she didn't remember Dad. On the way out some dude initiated the brief conversation depicted two entries ago.

Next, big surprise, I went to Rich O's. There, big surprise, I had a Bell's Kalamazoo Stout (95).

I started out sitting at the island, talking with ExBartender and CoffeeDude, but then this old fuckhead sat with us and he pissed me off so I went and stood at the bar and talked with FutureDude for a while.

My next beer was an Avery Old Jubilation Ale (50), which I haven't had in a year and which was quite yummy.

After a while DooRagGirl (FutureDude's girlfriend) came in so I went to White Castle and then came home.

The kitty wasn't at White Castle tonight, for those of you who care about that sort of thing.

Just fucking do it.

It would be okay of you did. Really, it would be good.

It's not like I'm stupid. I can tell you're thinking about it.

Just do it.

Please.

I won't hold my breath though.

I feel like I should write something before I go out tonight, but what I was planning to write about didn't happen.

Maybe I'll write about it not happening.

I didn't go to the cemetery today. I'd been kinda sorta planning to, but I ended up not going.

It's not like it's a big tradition of mine or anything. I haven't been since last October, when I went to a wedding across the street from their graves. I stopped by after the ceremony and sat and told them about all of the bullshit that was going on with me. I told them, even though I don't think I really knew what was going on yet.

I've written here several times, and anyone who knows me at all knows this already, but I'm not comfortable in crowds. Give me one person to talk to and I'm golden. Add a third person and I'll start to let myself fade into the background. Add any more people and I may as well not be there at all.

That cemetery is too crowded.

My parents' graves are, of course, right next to each other. Then, about 20 feet away, lie the graves of my maternal grandparents.

There all right there.

So I can't just go visit Mom, because Dad's there too. I can't talk to just one of them. I have to visit them both. Then, I have to go visit my grandmother. And by the time I'm ready to leave what was supposed to have been a cleansing experience has instead left me emotionally exhausted.

The thing is - there are things that I'd like to discuss privately with each of them, but there's no way. Forget the fact that they're all dead and they can't hear me anyway. I mean if one of them could hear me then they all could. I can't tell my dad about the latest hot sex I had because my mom's right there and I can't talk to Mom about how much I miss LaptopGirl because Dad would call me a pansy, and I certainly can't talk about any of that stuff with my grandmother listening in anyway.

It's all pretty silly, and I know it is. Those bodies in the ground, they stopped being the people I loved the moment they died. Whatever was left of them, if there was anything left at all, it didn't go into the ground. So why does this culture of mine place such significance on rest in peace and why do we visit graves and leave notes and flowers?

I guess it gives us someplace to go, when we miss them and we want to be near them. I guess a gravesite is as good a place as any. Until it gets too crowded.

November 12th. Again. The first, and the worst, of many days on November which suck ass. The Day Dad Died.

It's a pretty strange thing to realize, that I'm catching up with my father. Every November 12th I'm 365 days older, yet he stays the same. Eventually I might catch up with him completely, or maybe even surpass him.

Weird.

My sister always reads this every year on the 12th of November. I think she likes that it makes her cry.

Today I slept a lot.

I slept from about 10:00 until 7:00, then I decided that going to work would be stupid.

So I slept from 9:00 until 1:30.

Then I had to do some work. I had a conference call with some vendor support people. It was quite trippy trying to deal with technical issues with a fever.

Next I slept from 4:00 until 9:00. I had the strange dream.

After that I took a long, hot shower and I actually felt better. I felt halfway normal actually.

So I went down to Rich O's.

All I did there was have myself a Bell's Kalamazoo Stout (70), and talk to BamaCouple for a while. Once they left I had part of another glass of the stout (75) and then I went to White Castle.

Here are some pictures of the cat at White Castle, which I have named Slider and which I hope to be able to actually pet some day.

Did nothing all day but sleep and sweat and dream, so I've picked the most interesting of those activities for my daily entry. Proceed at your own risk.

There was this old abandoned school, a big one, like from the seventies or something. A sprawling one-story affair.

There was an older dude with us, a Brian Dennehy type, and also a girl that looked like Jennifer Aniston but was named Neela. She was my girlfriend or something.

There were some kids with us too, but I think they were with Brian Dennehy more than with us.

We broke into the school and went to this one part where somebody had painted a Neela mural on the wall. There was door there so we went in.

The place beyond that door was something besides an old school. It was this huge mansion or castle or something. We ended up splitting up and doing some exploring.

There was this one room that had two beds set in an "L" shape and raised up on antique dressers to make what I told Neela was the coolest bed I'd ever seen. She found this plaque on the wall that said some lady had built the bed so her grandkids could share her bed without kicking her all night.

There was this other room where there was a painting of a cat's face on the wall. If you threw a cracker or something at the cat's mouth the painting would come to life and catch the cracker in mid-air, then it would go back to being a painting.

Just beyond that cat face room was a room with a little miniature coffin - like a kid's coffin would be - with a Batman sticker on top of it. A sign leaning against the coffin read "Do you dare to open the box of doom?"

So of course I opened the coffin right away. There was a smaller box inside, along with a record player and a record. Neela played the record and it was Adam West's (the dude from the 1960s Batman series) voice talking on and on about how opening the smaller box would unleash evil upon the world. It was all very cheesy like a county fair haunted house attraction.

Not deterred at all by Adam West, I opened the smaller box. Inside there was a mirror, and a pinkish sheet of plastic the same size as the mirror, and a big paper key, and a small metal key.

I was trying to figure out how to unleash the evil upon the world - mainly by spinning the metal key on the mirror, when this guy that looked like Steve Guttenberg came and told us that his best friend in the world has just been killed. Eaten by the cat in the cat face room I think.

Then all this rumbling started and Neela and I knew that we had to get the hell out of there. So we took off running back the way we'd came in. Once we reached the original part of the building - the part that just looked like an old abandoned school - the walls started moving around and trying to block us from leaving. I, of course, can just walk through walls in my dreams but I forgot that I hadn't taught Neela how to do it so we got separated.

I made it outside just in the nick of time, but I never saw Neela or the kids or the Steve Guttenberg guy again.

The cops showed up and while they were trying to figure out what to do one of them hollered out for everyone to look at the sky.

Instead of stars, the sky was full of comets. It was very pretty. We also saw that a couple of airplanes were leaving contrails that stretched across the sky. We also saw that the Batman symbol was being projected onto the Moon.

So I just kind of played it dumb because I didn't want the cops to know that it was me that had unleashed the evil upon the world.

The next day I broke back into the school to look for Neela. I was up in the cool bed room and I looked out the window. I could see that, one floor up and one window over, was the Brain Dennehy dude, but he didn't see me so I couldn't ask him what had happened to Neela.

101.2F

38.44C

311.59K

That's how hot I am.

Fevers always knock me on my ass.

EwokGirl has been coughing and sneezing in the next cubicle all week long, proudly announcing to everyone how she still comes in to work when she's sick.

What she doesn't seem to realize, what I have been trying to tell her, is that sick days are provided for the coworkers as much as they are for the person that's sick. So they don't get contaminated.

Oops.

Not having a thermometer at work, I'm forced to rely on the feel of my eyelids against my eyes to judge my temperature.

I have a fever.

Thanks a lot, EwokGirl.

My sister Dina, always the organized one, today asked me what I wanted for Christmas.

I've given this a lot of thought, and I know what it is that I want more than anything else in the world.

A time machine.

But I don't want the el cheapo time machine. Nope, I want the deluxe model with the paradox inhibitor. I wouldn't want to go back to November 14, 2003 and murder myself before I went to Rich O's, and then immediately vanish because I'd never lived long enough to get a time machine to use to go back and murder myself. That would just be embarrassing.

Come to think of it, I doubt that it's called murder when you kill a past version of yourself. It's not really a suicide either. Maybe the time machine owner's manual will have a glossary in the back or something.

So please, spring for the deluxe model. It may cost more, but it's soooo worth it.