Okay, guess where I am, as I write this. Not my actual physical location, but guess what kind of place I'm in.

Guess!

You guessed that I was in a bar, didn't you?

Wrong!

I'm in a coffee house!

Weird, huh?

And I guess it's a Christian coffee house, or that's what I'm told anyway. Not that that matters to me one way or the other. It's the being in a coffee house that make this weird for me. I'm pretty sure that this is the first time I've ever graced such as establishment with my presence. Despite having lived in Seattle for six years.

Anyway, I'm here because I was invited, sort of. Or maybe I invited myself. Hard to tell sometimes.

I feel like some kind of hippie or something. I wonder if I should start hating myself. I also have a strong urge to smoke a clove cigarette, but they don't allow any smoking in here. I think that's part of the Christian coffee house thing they've got going.

Also, I hate coffee!

But, of course, I'm not here for the coffee, or even for the nonsmoking or the Christian music playing softly. I'm here for the company, and she's lovely.

So, I'm writing this on the back of an old carshow flyer from 2002, using a pen from that same era. I'm doing these things because my aforementioned lovely companion says I can't use her pen, nor can I have a sheet of paper. So I found an old pen and some old flyers in my glove compartment.*

Lovely, but stingy, apparently.

I'm drinking this fancy hippie soda named Bawl's Guarana. I don't know why - I just picked it. Maybe because of the pretty blue bottle. It says "High Caffeine Guarana Beverage" on the label. So that might be good, to have some extra caffeine. I was up late last night, and up early this morning.

Since we've been sitting here, two different women have walked in looking like they're having the worst day of their lives. I feel like I should go offer them a hug or something, but (a) I'm not one to go around hugging strangers, and (b) they look like they're bitches.

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And now I feel a little useless. I don't want to bother my lovely companion with my inane chatter. She's trying to work, after all. I just leafed through an entire chick magazine, but that didn't really make me feel any more useful. Not a lot of call for magazine-leafer-throughers these days, I don't think.

I'm not bored though. I mean, I am here after all. So it could be much much worse. Like I could be somewhere else and not have such a pretty girl for company.

This fancy caffeine soda isn't all that good. Tastes kinda like flat Sprite.

Wow, I've managed to fill up this entire sheet of paper with my scribblings. I thought for a second about just scanning it and then posting the image, but I don't think I want anyone to know just how bad my penmanship is.

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And now, I've got a decision to make. Do I start writing on the back of this second sheet of paper, or do I stop?

I'm pretty sure that no lives will be saved or lost as a result of my decision, but it could definitely affect how bad these craps cramps in my hand get.

Heh, when I first wrote the word cramps I accidentally wrote craps instead.

Like I had craps in my hand.

Gross.

* - She was kidding, and I was totally fooled by her kidding. Of course she would have let me use her pen, and a sheet of paper.

It turns out that HairCutLady is still very much alive and in business. She just had her phone disconnected because they doubled her monthly rate.

So, yay!

I keep hearing about things I'd never do, or that I would definitely do. Depends on the actual things.

The point is that I keep hearing things that make me think I'm a good person. A better person.

What the point should be is that it's not a contest. And another point should be that, if it was a contest, then I lost a long time ago.

As of tonight, it's been four weeks since my friend WomanRepellant died.

Since I'm in a crappy mood anyway, I figured I'd crack open a bottle of Avery The Reverend (625) and have another conversation with his ghost.

I hope he's been doing okay. I hope he took my advice, four weeks ago, to go and haunt pretty girls for a while. I know that's what I'd do if I were a ghost.

UPDATE: It was a nice talk. Even though I got distracted by some emails, he understood. And I certainly understood when he looked at his ghostly watch, muttered something about NotHideousGirl taking a shower, and vanished in a puff of fog.

He may have been a dirty old man, but he was my friend, and I miss him.

You can go here if you're bored. There are old entries.

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Looks like several months of not even touching the guitar did absolutely nothing to help my playing.

Weird, huh?

But now I've got myself a doohickey. An Effects Processor or some such. MusicalYuppieDude gave it to me. It looks like a pretty complicated piece of gadgetry. I'm pretty sure I'd need a pilot's license to fully understand everything it can do, but the main thing that it can do for me is that it can let me play my electric guitar with headphones.

Before, in case you've forgotten, I couldn't play the thing because my amp always had this very loud hum. For a while I had everything shoved into a corner of my basement where the hum was more tolerable, but it really was never acceptable. Plus, I wanted to mess with the guitar in my living room while I watched some guitar-lesson DVDs.

Now I can do that.

And there's a chance, I'm thinking, that I might be able to hook my amp up to the thing as well. Before I can try that I need to get another cable, though.

And then maybe I'll learn how to play. Would that be something?

Watch out, I'm in a mood.

Sadness finally decided to take a break from constantly kicking me in the guts. So that's cool. Or at least it would be cool, if futility hadn't stepped right in to take over the job. To finish the job, perhaps.

But hey, who am I to complain? I keep saying I like this crap. I keep saying that it's better than the fucking nothing I felt for so many years.

I keep saying those things. Every now and then I even believe one or both of them.

Besides, some things deserve to be felt. Not distracted away or bottled up or ignored.

One of the things I keep catching myself thinking, even though I know that thinking is a really stupid thing for me to be doing, is that if things were different, things would be different.

Why I keep thinking that, I have no idea. I mean, there's absolutley zero evidence that things would be different just because things were different.

In my more lucid moments, I think that things will be exactly the same, no matter how different things are.

That's depressing to me. Because I don't exactly enjoy things all that much. Things suck, to be honest.

I think this was the third time I've been in the newspaper. At least the third time. One time I drove my car off a cliff in Seattle. Another time StoreGirl and I were at Rich O's when a local paper came in to do a story about the place.

The third time was today. Click the picture for the entire article, while it lasts.

This was an article about Rich O's and its owner Roger. I was mentioned in the first sentence and I was quoted a couple of times.

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Also today, I got to talk to SassyGirl for a while! We'd been texting back and forth, and eventually I got sick of that and just called her ass up. She and JauntyGirl are doing well, but they're far away from here, so it's a very mixed blessing.

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The rest of the day was kinda disappointing, except I got a sweet email while I was taking a nap. Maybe I'll have more to write before I go to bed. Don't hold your breath, though.