DooRagGirl told me about this comic style where you just used dots and didn't need any artistic abilities whatsoever.

No artistic abilities - Hey, that's me!

I'm sitting in my office. It's about 80 degrees in the house, and my vents are spewing hot air.

Why are they spewing hot air?

Because I've turned my thermostat up to 95 degrees, that's why.

Why would I do such a stupid thing?

Because my air conditioner has been running nearly non-stop for a couple of weeks now, and the air handler is encrusted with ice, as are the lines running to the outside unit.

This ice manages to melt a little bit every now and then, and so now my basement has large areas of wetness.

I hope this ice building was caused by the fact that I haven't cleaned my filter in a thousand years. It was pretty filthy.

So I took the filter outside and hosed it off to make it nice and clean, and now I'm running my heat pump in heat mode to hopefully melt this ice buildup.

My thinking is that, since I run it in cool mode during the Winter to remove ice buildup on the outside unit, maybe running it in heat mode in the Summer will remove ice buildup on the inside parts.

We'll see. This would suck anyway, but it sucks even more because I'm leaving town in the morning. I don't think I can bring myself to leave the air conditioning off while I'm gone - my cats would melt.

So I'll have to call the guys while I'm in Orlando and make arrangements for somebody to be here when they come out to inspect and/or repair my system.

Kind of an abbreviated beer report tonight. Abbreviated because of this:

Founders Dirty Bastard

(draft) This beer knocked me on my ass. Very dark red, nearly black, with a decent head and more lacing than I expected. The flavor was a little intense. I kept wanting to call this a Winter warmer without the Winter part. A beer to celebrate happiness or drown sorrows, not a beer to simply enjoy.

Hey Roger, this stuff is 8.3% according to ratebeer. It hit me like it was more like 18.3% though.

I had this after work. It pretty much gave me an instant hangover. Even after I took a nap and got up at 8:30 I was still hung-over.

So of course I went to Rich O's.

I'd figured that I'd just drink Diet Coke tonight, but after the first one I did end up having a pint of Smithwick's. Pretty good, but it did nothing to cure me, and I switched back to Diet Cokes for the rest of the night.

Spent the night feeling pretty claustrophobic, sitting in the living room area with OddlyFamiliarGirl, CoffeeDude, NotGeorge, and several people that I don't know.

Oh, yeah. My cousin Jamie was sitting out in the loser section. I didn't talk to him for very long though. Kind of felt like I was intruding or something. Jamie's sort of hard to read.

Usually when I'm sitting with a bunch of people, I'll just keep quiet and listen in on the conversations, only adding my $.02 rarely. Tonight I really felt like an outsider, sitting there with my Diet Coke while everyone else drank beer and talked about fishing and their kids' elementary schools. I had very little to add to those discussions so I kept very quiet all night. They all probably think I'm sad about you know what, but I'm not. Just a little hung-over, and a little clautrophobic.

After I left Rich O's I stopped and visited VigilanteGirl for a while, and that helped my mood a lot. She made me take some donuts home. They're taunting me from the kitchen.

Just an excerpt from a long time ago:

I don't know why he's taking this exit. Why is he following us?

Because he wuuuuuvs you.

No he doesn't!

Silly, to know you is to wuv you.

Don't know what reminded me of this conversation, but it made me smile.

I'm pretty sure that I got the number sequence one wrong. I always over-analyze those.

Your IQ Is 135

Your Logical Intelligence is Genius Your Verbal Intelligence is Genius Your Mathematical Intelligence is Genius Your General Knowledge is Exceptional

Today we had a work meeting at Churchill Downs.

Even though I grew up here in Indiana, and have spent 24 years living here, I've never bothered to go to this track.

I wouldn't even have gone today if they hadn't made me.

Being around horses reminds me of things I'd rather not be reminded of.

Anyway, I took some pics.

This was display stand, made up to look like the track and stands, just filled with hundreds and hundreds of little crystal figurines. It was very cool, and it looked very fucking expensive.

We had our meeting in the new "luxury box" addition to the place. I guess a lot of people are mad that the spires no longer stand out above everything else anymore. I guess I can understand their feelings.

I ended up staying to watch one race, then I went to work and caught up on some stuff.

Just wanted to say that I'm pretty embarrassed over how incredibly fucking boring this 'blog has become.

What am I, a fifteen-year-old kid, with nothing to say but mundane bullshit about my boring life?

Today I wrote about a cheeseburger for fuck's sake!

I need to do better than this.

I need to find something that stirs the passions within me. Something that gets these creative juices flowing. Something that enrages me, or makes me deliriously happy. Something that I care about and can't shut up about.

Have I become so accustomed to the turmoil in my heart that I've become jaded by it? Have I grown so complacent that nothing affects me? Am I a robot?

No, no, and no.

I sit here on nights like this, with this gorilla flicking boogers into the back of my head, and I want to start typing and just keep at it until my fingers are bloody nubs. Until everything I've been holding back for all these months has been released in one colossal fit of honesty and brutality and ...

But I don't.

It's not that I have nothing to say. I have plenty that I could say.

I just need to find something else.

Man I'm tired.

Today we had a working lunch meeting at the Hard Rock. Probably only the third or fourth time that I've eaten lunch at work in the past 10 years..

This is not because I'm an anti-social asshole, as conventional theory holds. It's because when I eat I get tired, and when I eat in the middle of the day it just wipes me out and pretty much makes me useless for the rest of the day.

The food at the Hard Rock was okay. Just basic stuff I guess. I had a cheeseburger that was underdone and it came with like a dozen fries. I also sampled some potato skins and this pineapple-chicken-bbq quesadilla thingy that wasn't too bad. Potato skins with cheese and bacon are perhaps the 20th century's greatest contribution to mankind.

Or maybe not. I still like them.

My drink choices at the Hard Rock were, as expected, pretty limited, so I had a couple Guinnii. Pretty damn good stuff, that Guinness.

After work I stopped by Rich O's to meet up with RealTrainGirl and MisunderstoodGirl. While I was waiting I had an NABC Blonde Abbey.

While I was waiting some more I had a couple more Guinnii. Yummy.

Anyway, the girls finally showed up and MisunderstoodGirl and I got a kick out of listening to all of the train lingo that was being slung by RealTrainGirl and ChefDude.

I've been helping MisunderstoodGirl set up her own 'blog so we talked about that for a bit, and I offered to host her pictures because the free account she has at JournalSpace doesn't allow pictures.

I think I'm going to go to sleep now. Big day tomorrow. Going to the track.

Also, I missed her today. It was probably because of the Guinness.

Got my hair cut after work yesterday, and the lady was telling about this unusual problem she's having with her swimming pool.

She went to clear off what she thought were leaves stuck to the inside of the pool near the filter housing, and when she touched them, they took off swimming across the pool!

Her "leaves" were actually bats.

That's right, bats.

She had about a dozen of them inside her swimming pool!

I've never heard of bats being able to swim before, but a quick googling tells me that some of them can indeed do it.

So Dina, that's something else for you to worry about when you're lounging around in the pool.

You're welcome.

I suppose I should really consider thinking about maybe starting to get ready for my trip to Orlando.

I'm just not very excited about it. I've never been there - never been to the state of Florida at all in fact - but I just cannot imagine it comparing well to Las Vegas.

An awful lot depends on whether there are any good bars and/or touristy areas near the hotel. I'm not planning on going to Disney World, I hate lines way to much for that.

I guess I'll just have to wait and see what happens. Maybe I'll surprise myself and have fun. I did in Portland after all.

I wish I would have chosen to fly down there on Saturday instead of Sunday. That way I'd have all day Sunday to goof around. Maybe rent a car and go to the ocean or The Everglades or something. As it stands I probably won't bother with a car unless there's nothing to do at night around the hotel.

I'm supposed to fly back home Thursday night. I guess that, if I'm really enjoying myself, I could see about returning Friday instead and burn a day of vacation.