Women are strange.

They're also delightful and confusing and beautiful and aggravating and soft.

But mostly they're just strange.

I've mentioned before how I tend to migrate from room to room at night. Master bedroom to guest bedroom to living room to master bedroom, and so on.

I'm guessing that this behavior must be related to stress.

My cats and I have several little parades a night sometimes. MixedSignalGirl used to join in the parades, but eventually she wised up and she'd run on ahead to make sure she ended up with "her" side of the bed. Then she wised up even more and she just stayed where she was because, chances were, we'd all be back before the night was over anyway. Now she's wised up completely and wants nothing to do with me.

Anyway, I guess that last night I screwed something up. I remember going to bed in the guest room, and I remember waking up on the sofa in the living room. But I also remember waking up sometime during the night in my master bedroom sleeping on a pile of clean laundry.

That's what did it, I'm sure.

I fubared my back.

I suspect that the advanced yoga position I must have attained to be able to sleep with the laundry and the cats did something to a nerve or something, since this morning I could barely walk.

So I shuffled in to work because I had some shit that couldn't be put off, then I took the second half of the day off. Once home, I mostly just took a very hot bath and then slept.

Now my back feels a little better. I'd like to get a heating pad for it. Or maybe I could borrow one of my grandmother's old walkers.

I want to say something now.

I shouldn't say anything. There are those who would say that I haven't yet earned the right to say anything.

Well, those people are wrong. Mostly wrong anyway. So I'm going to say something. But, out of respect for someone who hasn't yet earned my respect, I'm not going to say what I really want to say.

What I'm instead going to say is this:

I quit playing that particular game a long time ago. I lost every single fucking time, and I never once had fun. I have no desire to ever play that game again.

There, I feel better now. I guess.

And the really cool thing is if anyone asks me what the fuck I'm talking about, I can make up some bullshit. Or not. I guess it'll depend on how much bullshit I get thrown my way first.

I hate it when my most recent entry sucks, so I'm writing this one which hopefully sucks less.

Somebody last night - I think it was one of the PBDs in a moment of alcohol-induced pseudo-wisdom, made the following observation:

You should just follow your heart, and do the right thing.

Head started to nod up and down in unison like commuters on a bumpy bus ride - imagery which looks much better in my head than it does on my screen.

Such a sage suggestion! Such worldly wisdom! Such axiomatic advice!

Such babbling bullshit!

I had to put a stop to it before people started getting whiplash.

"But what if following your heart and doing what's right are mutually exclusive?" I offered. "Remember that hearts are stupid and selfish. It's very rare for them to be right about anything. What if you're always finding yourself being forced to choose between following your heart and doing what's right?"

That stopped the bobbing.

"Well then that's pretty fucked-up," someone responded.

Indeed.

After Friday's um, interesting scenery, Saturday was back to the same old same old at Rich O's.

Strangers and weirdoes. Assholes and idiots.

They were having some kind of fancy music thingy in the special people area, and society's elite took advantage of the opportunity to look down on us beer-drinking trolls. So that was fun.

When I arrived, a little before 8:00, It was pretty crowded. I didn't know anyone except at the island, which was full of regulars. But since it was full I had to sit on the loveseat and get gawked at by a couple of weirdoes who were sitting on the sofa.

I had a yummy Rogue Smoke (370).

After about a million years, during which absolutely nothing happened, some assholes came and sat with us in the living room area. Luckily a space had opened up at the island by then, so I picked up my shit and moved over there.

I had another Rogue Smoke (390).

I spent the rest of the night emailing RockGirl and talking with MusicalHippyDude. I tried to call HatGirl, to she what she was doing, but I fell asleep during the epic masterpiece that she uses instead of a ringer on her phone. Oh well. I would have called NotHideousGirl but I don't have her number on my new Blackberry. Oh well.

Let's see. I heard an interesting story about SuperShitHead which further confirmed the appropriateness of that particular nickname. I talked to one of the PBD ladies about this secret school for smart kids. MusicalHippyDude told me that I had "The gift of pen" which I decided to take as a compliment.

After several million more years during which nothing happened, I went to White Castle and then came home.

And now it's 7:45 in the morning and I have to work for another hour or so.

Yippee.

(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.