I drove into this loveliness on my way home from work this evening.

I wish I had a wide-angle option on my phone. The sky was incredible.

Somehow, the lack of lightning made it even scarier.

When I was a child, I imagined the life that I would lead.

I knew that I'd be married, and that I'd have a couple of kids. I knew that my wife would be beautiful. I'd be rich, somehow, though I never put much effort into imagining just how I'd find wealth. I mean, I was never going to be a doctor or a lawyer or even an astronaut. Those thoughts seemed irrelevant to me back then. What was relevant was that I'd be a father, and a husband. I'd live the American dream. I'd have a good life.

When I became an adult, I did my best to live the life that I wanted.

For a while, I clung fiercely to that hazy childhood dream. Despite the failed marriage, despite losing my mother, despite all of the other bullshit that comes with the coming of age. I fought the disintegration of my dream as hard as I could. But its loss was, in the end, inevitable. And when that dream was completely gone, I found a new dream. One of contentedness and, every now and then, quiet happiness.

And then that dream evaporated too.

Pressures from family and friends and work, they'd just keep massing at the walls of my safe little fortress. Finding and taking advantage of the smallest cracks in the walls that I'd so carefully erected around myself. Eventually, I found myself outnumbered and surrounded. My life became less about me and more about those around me. And I lost myself in the confusion, along with the focus I'd spent so much time perfecting.

One day, a couple of years ago, I found new focus. I found new meaning for my life. Welling up from a place inside myself that I'd forgotten even existed, I found a new dream.

That one didn't turn out so well, either. I might have mentioned it here from time to time.

When I reached middle age, I stopped thinking about living a life. I instead began to think about salvaging a life out of the time I had left.

The past stretches behind me, a testament to the failures and the missed opportunities and the broken dreams. The future looms ahead of me, but all I can see is the end. The finish line. I tell myself that there's still enough time to live the life that I want to live, but I first have to decide what I want that life to be. And then, once I decide, I have to act. I have to stop being afraid. But it's tough, because there might not be many dreams left. I need to be sure and pick a good one. A possible one.

When you're old, you give up on your dreams. You accept that what you have is all that you're ever going to have. You realize that the life that you wanted, no matter what it was, it had always been, and would always be, forever and fucking ever, out of reach. For it was a always moving target, always staying ahead of you as you raced helter-skelter through the years.

I haven't reach that point.

I haven't given up.

Yet.

My sister Neisha sent me this picture of us siblings.

Well this should be interesting, trying to remember the last couple of days.

Yesterday was such a long day that Friday seems like a million years ago.

Let's see. Friday night. DaveFest Night Thirteen.

I might have gotten to Rich O's a little early. I want to say it was like 7:30 or something. There were some dipshits in the living room area eating, and this Joe Cool fucker was at the island. I sat at the bar next to one of the PBDs, and had a half a Cone Smoker (1916).

I'd figured at first that I'd just sit at the bar all night. I was looking forward to it actually. But after the PBD left a couple of loud strangers sat next to me at the bar and started trying to talk to me, so I picked up my shit and moved over to the throne since the dipshits had left.

The rest of the night consisted of talking with MusicalHippieDude and WomanRepellant, and wondering if HatGirl was going to come in. To drink, I had a Newcastle (2200), then a Bell's Kalamazoo Stout (450), and finally half a glass of Mestreechs (115).

The second half of that glass I gave to GlassesGirl. It wasn't that there was anything wrong with the Mestreechs. It just clashed incredibly with the Bell's I'd just had. Much worse than, say, drinking orange juice after brushing your teeth. Much much worse, in fact.

Other than that, not much happened. One of the regular bartenders had the night off or was on vacation or something, so they had this one cute chick from the Sportstime side bartending the Rich O's side. So now everyone is spoiled.

But there were no HatGirl appearances, and the cute bartender wasn't able to make up for that lack, so the night was pretty boring.

---

Saturday sucked dead donkeys. I worked all day, and I worked most of the night. I guess that's what I get the big bucks for though, so I can't complain too much.

---

By the time I got everything back to normal at work, it was almost 10:00. I briefly considered going over to my sister's house for this party she was having, but in the end I figured that it was too late for that. I ended up at The Pub in Louisville instead.

I like that place, at least I like it when that one bitch bartender isn't working. She wasn't working last night, so there.

Pretty much all I did was have a couple Newcastles (2240) and then a Hoegaarden White (32). I think this was the first time I'd had the Hoegaarden in draft form. It was pretty good.

There was this one chick there who was convinced that she knew me from somewhere, but she couldn't remember any details. I actually do remember the details, and I did the right thing in blowing her off. She's a coworker of MixedSignalGirl's.

By the time I got home I'd been up almost 24 hours, so I cancelled my pool practice for the night and just went to bed.

I still look, when I have the chance. I still look into her eyes. I look for a sign.

I just can't tell. I can't tell if there's anything there at all.

I get lost in those eyes, and I can't see a damn thing.

That's a bad sign, I think.

If there was something there, wouldn't I be able to see it? Wouldn't it be obvious, the way it used to be?

Wouldn't I just know?

I wonder, does she look into my eyes for the same reason?

And if so, does she then turn away disappointed, or relieved?

I didn't think it was going to happen, because I'm scheduled to be on-call that week, but my new best friend in the entire world has agreed to trade on-call days with me for the week of July 4th.

That means that I get four (4) days off in a row!

Yay!

That means that I'm going to Cleveland!

Yay!

All I have planned for sure is to visit the Great Lakes Brewery and to catch an Indians game. Other than that, I'm wide-open. Maybe I'll visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

I am once again excited about life.

Yay!

I suppose this entry from Roger's 'blog explains it:

The three-tier blues strike again.

So, tonight DaveFest enters its third weekend, and it does so once again without the beer that, for me, was pretty much the point of the whole thing.

A part of me realizes that this delay is a good thing. I think I've been quite honest with myself when I've said, "Self, when the Rogue Chocolate Stout goes on tap, that's all I'm going to drink. All those other beers will fade into irrelevance once my dark master reappears."

This way, frustrating as it's been, this way I've at least been able to drink a lot of my other favorite beers. It's been a time of tough choices for me, seeing all those yummy beers on the board at the same time. It's been tough, but it's been wonderful.