I went ahead and made a little About Me page.

Everybody else has one, why not me?

It's still a work in progress, though.

I also changed the quote mechanism at the top of the main page to provide a link to the original entry.

All you heartbreakers and love takers out there, what do you feel when you look behind you at that trail of broken hearts? What do you feel when they scream out your name and then watch you turn away?

Do you feel proud? Exhilarated? Like a winner?

Do you feel anything at all?

What will you feel when you're the one left in someone else's wake? Will you cry out to them as so many have cried out to you? Will you wonder how you can survive another day alone? Will you feel devastated? Hollow? Crushed? Like your soul has been ripped from your body and shredded into a million pieces? Will you wish you were dead, and finally understand that what you've been doing to others all along isn't quite as much fun when you're on the other side of the pain?

Good.

I wonder what that means?

When I least expect it.

This is an important question because I figure that's when the next big terrible fucked up dramatic thing will happen to me. That's when my sanity will once again be shattered and I'll once again have to start from scratch.

But how do you define least here? Is it when I'm aware that something will eventually happen, but probably not now? Or now. Or now. Or now. Or right now.

Or is it like having monkeys fly out of my ass to give presents to the poor kids? I don't expect that at all, so does that mean that I expect it less than this terrible thing that I both dread and long for?

These are important considerations, because if it's the latter then I may be safe for a long time, but if it's the former I could be in real trouble here. I expect this to happen, but not right away. Each day I feel the probability of it happening become a little bit less. Each day I expect it less than I did the day before.

At what point do I hit that magical when I least expect it mark?

I think I hit it when I stop worrying about it, but I haven't quite forgotten about it.

Like right fucking now.

The moral of this entry is to worry about stuff. You may just prevent it from happening.

Okay, I have 872 things on my mind right now, and I'd just love to write a lengthy entry about each of them, but alas, I am a lazy fuck. So I'll just cover the first 2 or 3 things that pop into my head.

After my nap.

Maybe.

This girl at Border's today was totally stalking me. I'd talked to her briefly when I first went in, about the writer Connie Willis, then she followed me around the store for a half-hour, almost keeping out of sight, but not quite.

Then she "just happened" to show up at Sully's where I was eating lunch. I was getting a little bit freaked out. Luckily I know the bartender and he let me sneak out the back door.

She was pretty enough, but I really don't need any more drama. Got plenty, thanks anyway.

As usual, this is nothing like it looked inside my head.

I kinda like it though.

So, like I already said, I was in a pretty strange mood last night. Untethered, unfettered, and a little bit disengaged.

Started out the night going to check out this new place in Georgetown that Dina and Kenny wanted to go to. I needed to get there early to see if they had any good beer.

They not only didn't have any good beer, they didn't have any beer at all. The place was like a Burger King, except with pool tables.

So I left there and got to Rich O's way earlier than normal. The place was crowded as fuck, with the prerequisite infestation of strangers taking up all of the seats at the bar and in the living room area. I just hate those people so much.

Because I'd arrived so early, and because I didn't plan on leaving early, I knew that I'd have to make an adjustment to my drinking regimen. I decided that I'd just stick to Guinness.

You know, I'm really bored sitting here writing this, so I'm going to stop fairly abruptly.

I ended up having three Guinnii and then a Stone Imperial Stout. Dina and Kenny came in for a while. It was a nice night.

One time when I was a kid - I have no idea how old - somebody (probably my grandfather) must have told us to go fly a kite, because that's exactly what we did.

My cousins Jeff and Chris, and maybe my sister Dina, all gathered in this little field next to my grandmother's house and we somehow managed to get this one kite flying so high that we could barely see it. As this was our first real kite-flying experience we'd messed something up, and we had the kite string running under this power line.

So the higher the kite went, the tighter the string was pulled against the power line. It was only a matter of time, we all knew, before that string was going to break.

Eventually, of course, it did break. The reel in my hands lost its connection with the kite, the string fell to the ground, and we all looked up. To see what was happening to the kite.

It fell to the ground. What else was it going to do, fly to the Moon? Of course it fell.

But not for a couple of seconds.

When that string broke, when its connection with the Earth had been severed, that kite leapt skyward. Spinning and dancing in the air far above our heads, the kite gained altitude. It actually seemed to be alive. Alive and free. For the first, and as it turned out, last time in its existence.

The kite did, after a few glorious seconds of freedom, fall to the ground, and eventually we walked to retrieve it. What was left of it anyway. Its wooden bones shattered, its paper wings torn and ragged, it was a pretty poor remnant of what it had once been. I don't think we even bothered to pick it up. We just left it there to rot in that field.

So anyway, I've been in a fairly unusual mood tonight, and I've had a tough time coming up with a good description of what it is I'm feeling. I was reminded of the kite by something I saw on TV, and I realized that I'd found the perfect metaphor to describe what's going through my head tonight.

I feel like that kite would have felt, just after its string had broken. Pretty sure that a fall was coming, but still doing my best to enjoy that which I'd just been granted. No longer bound to anything. Spinning and dancing. Relishing the freedom.