1. Asking a question, then arguing with the answer.

This list is not meant to be all-inclusive.

Lately people keep asking me what my plans are.

What am I doing Saturday? Will I be at Rich O's Friday?

Here's a little secret: I have no plans.

What I have are impulses. Some idea or opportunity presents itself, and I go with it. I get invited to a concert to hear a band I never heard of, and I go. I hear about a cool bar in Maine, so I buy plane tickets. I sit in Las Vegas and realize that Death Valley is only a few hours away, so I rent a car. I just go and do it.

I also have habits. I do things because they're what I've done before. They're what I've become accustomed to doing.

Every now and then, however, an inkling or a desire or even a habit will turn into a plan. It will turn into a plan because I just had to go and tell someone about it.

This causes two problems with me.

First, it's just a lot of pressure, knowing a day or a week in advance what I'll be doing. What I have to be doing, because I planned it. I tell people that I'll be in a certain place at a certain time and, by God, I better be there. To do otherwise would be irresponsible.

The second problem with telling people my plans is that, once I tell them, they'll know about them. They can then begin to scheme and plot, because they know my plans.

This happened last month when, on the Monday before my birthday, my sister called me up to "casually" ask what my plans were for Saturday night. Her fiancé ";just happened" to be going out of town and so she "just wondered" if I'd be going to Rich O's.

All kinds of alarms started going off in my head, for I know my sister, and I was pretty sure that she wasn't going to let my 40th birthday go by without some fanfare.

These paranoid feelings were pretty much confirmed when, that Friday, she called me again to see what time I planned to be at Rich O's Saturday night.

As it turned out, the celebration my sister put together was suitably muted and not at all the circus I'd been fearing.

So the first problem with plans is pressure, and the second, in my case, is paranoia.

The paranoia I felt yesterday when a bartender at Rich O's asked me if I'd be there Friday night. He'd never bothered to ask my plans before.

That paranoia doubled when today another bartender asked me the same question. "Are you coming in Friday, Dave?"

What the fuck?

Here's another secret: I don't like surprises.

The good surprises (like the aforementioned birthday observance) mean you have to be all giddy and shit and act like you're having a heart attack and just generally be a jolly fellow while congratulating everyone on how surprised you are.

Secret number three: I'm not a jolly fellow.

And the bad surprises, well they're a different thing altogether, aren't they? Those are the surprises that nobody wants to tell you about. They don't want to tell you but they sure as shit want to be there when you do find out.

The third kind of surprise is neither good nor bad, at least on paper. Nobody knows exactly what will happen, but it's sure to be interesting and dramatic.

I do, and have, paid good money to avoid that kind of surprise. The only thing worse than having to deal with the unexpected is having to deal with it unexpectedly.

So now I'm sitting here paranoid, for no good reason whatsoever, simply because at least two people know my plans for Friday night.

First, I want to say that I generally fast-forward through the judges comments, then make my notes. Once I've written my own opinions I go back and see what the judges thought.

Having said that, I did not agree with the judges on a few performances tonight.

Amanda: Hot. Too damn perky though. Sang a stupid song. (60 points)

Janay: The perfect song for her voice. I really liked it. (80 points)

Carrie: Yay Pisces! Cute tonight. She sang quite well but now I'm wondering if she can sing anything that's not country. (80 points)

Vonzell: There's that stupid name again. Sang one of my least favorite songs but did a good job. Best I've heard from her yet. (80 points)

Nadia: Great performance, pretty good singing. I can't believe that she's actually growing on me. (75 points)

Lindsey: Sexy as hell. I found it hard to stay objective. She mesmerized me tonight. (85 points)

Mikalah: Sang with her "nose voice" and I think she's got a cold. Pretty lousy performance. (55 points)

Jessica: She just irritated me tonight, but I guess it could have just been residual irritation left over from Mikalah's honking. (65 points)

I still think it's time for Janay to leave, and I wish Vonzell would take her stupid name and go as well.

2 packs chili-flavored ramen noodles
1 can Skyline chili (other canned chili tastes lke dog food, and is not watery enough)
1 handful of finely shredded cheddar cheese

Boil enough water to cook the noodles. Use a pot.

While waiting for the water to boil, mix the two flavor packets from the ramen noodles in a bowl with the skyline chili.

Nuke the chili mixture for a minute.

I usually break the ramen noodle bricks in half at this point.

Once the water is boiling, cook the noodles. Stir them up so they debrickify. Don't use your finger to stir.

Once the noodles are done, drain them though a collander and dump them on a plate. Or use the pot again if you're really lazy.

Dump the chili mixture on the noodles.

Sprinkle the cheese on top of the other stuff.

Enjoy!

You can use other flavor ramen noodles. The Skyline chili is bland enough to be suitable as baby food, so it really shouldn't clash with whatever flavor ramen noodles you choose. You might want to rethink the cheese selction though. Parmesan goes well with mushroom-flavored noodles. American goes well with shrimp-flavored.

My brain is holding its breath.

The feelings of paranoia, anticipation, of impending something are nearing a crescendo, and I am having a hard time keeping a thought in my head long enough to

Got an anonymous message this morning with a link to a story on a newspaper web site.

The article was about where LaptopGirl lives now.

The article mentioned LaptopGirl!

And it even quoted her a couple of times!

There was nothing about what a creepy asshole she thinks I am, so that was good.

There were, on the other hand, no pictures at all, so that was bad.

Thanks for the link, anonymous internet person!

Last night I told NotGeorge that I really needed to look up my horoscope. It didn't say what I expected:

The more you do to participate in group activities, the better. An opportunity to make personal changes should be taken advantage of. Don't let anyone cost you money.

This is what it should have said:

Last night, your sleep was interrupted by thunder. Similarly, your good mood of the afternoon will be broken by a series of evening encounters that may leave you wishing you'd just stayed in bed. Hang in there, Pisces, for the approaching calm will provide time to reflect, and you will realize that those who appreciate you far outnumber those who mistreat you.

Last night, I had to deal with three bitches before I could even have my first beer. The first, I ignored. The second, I walked away from. The third, well the third I reflected her bitchiness right back at her until she left in a huff. Never to return I hope.

Don't talk shit about my friends when (a) you know nothing about them and (b) they're not around to defend themselves.

Anyway, by the time I ordered my first beer, a Piraat, I was in a pretty shitty mood. NotGeorge showed up and kept asking me stupid questions for which I had no answers, and I pretty much told him as much. He threatened to "jack slap" me if I didn't snap out of it.

We were standing in the annex area and we stayed there until the couple in the living room area left. Neither of us had wanted to interrupt the guy's valiant efforts to get whatever he was hoping for. Don't know if he was successful but the two of them did leave together.

At about this time I had myself an NABC Community Dark.

So NotGeorge and I went to the living room area and sat with OddlyFamiliarGirl and talked for quite a while. At one point it was revealed that OddlyFamilarGirl knew my sister Neisha, a fact that I eventually confirmed by calling my sister and finding out when she'd graduated.

The coincidences piled up even higher when DooRagGirl came in and it turned out that she was OddlyFamiliarGirl's sister, and that she also knew my sister from school.

Oh yeah, there was this professor dude there too, but the circle was broken when it turned out that he didn't remember my other sister's ex-husband James, despite being at IUS at the same time.

Anyway, at one point I had a bottle of Alaskan Smoked Porter, which was quite yummy, then I had a couple glasses of Diet Coke while we all waited for the evening to come to a close.

I would have liked to have talked with DooRagGirl some more, as she was looking as beautiful as ever and I've always thought she was an interesting conversation partner, but TheProfessor pretty much monopolized her time.

Got to Rich O's fairly late last night, and was able to grab a seat on the loveseat pretty much right away.

I talked with TallLady while I had a bottle of t Ij Ijnde Jaars (yes, that seems to be the actual name), a beer recently recommended by Roger in his 'blog. I liked it a lot. Here's my review:

t Ij Ijnde Jaars

(bottle) Reminded me of a winter seasonal. Lots of fruit that I cannot quite define (cranberries? plums?). Thick and strong, yet refreshing at the same time. I really wish I could drink more than one.

After a while TallLady and I moved to the island to talk with CoffeeDude and I had one of these:

Avery New World Porter.

(draft) A fairly mild porter that smelled and tasted of baker's chocolate. No bitterness or coffee taste that I could detect, and I think that's a good thing.

Also, I was talking about how impressed I was that these two girls in the living room area had managed to drink an entire bottle of mead between them, and the bartender, cleaning up their mess, found a second empty bottle! An entire bottle of mead for each of those girls goes beyond impressive and ends up somewhere near insane.

Once I left Rich O's I went to where my uncle and cousin are doing karaoke again. At least they're doing it on Fridays until business picks up more.

A pretty tame night.

Every time I go to Rich O's, I get asked the same questions.

My answers are always the same.

No, I haven't. I don't know. I haven't heard.

How the fuck did I get appointed as the expert? Why do people assume that I'm in the know?

I know nothing, and all these questions just serve to remind me that I know nothing.

And I have a feeling that I'll be the last to know.

It's been a really long time, and I'm sure I've forgotten a lot, but I once read the book Dianetics by L. Ron Hubbard.

What I remember most about the book, aside from the ubiquitous anti-abortion theme, was the idea that whatever was bothering you could basically be erased, or at least made impotent, by replaying it over and over in your head.

A parent dies suddenly? Relive the moment you found out - sights, smells, sounds, everything you can come up with - and keep doing it until the shock that was born when it happened has been replaced by something else. Something less intense.

I'm not talking about the kind of shock that happens when you're startled or surprised. The kind where you exclaim, "Oh! My goodness!" and your heart maybe beats a little faster for a while. I'm talking about the shock to your soul that happens when something so bad happens that your mind just won't accept it all at once. It gets shoved down deep, and sometimes it stays there for years. Nagging at you. Whispering at you.

Now I don't agree with a lot of what I remember from that book, but this part I do agree with: The saying is Time heals all wounds but I think what really happens is that we relive and obsess over the bad events, even if we do it subconsciously - and eventually we've relived them so often that our mind is able to accept them.

The worst thing that ever happened to me, at least up to the time I read the book, was the death of my first real girlfriend. It was both sudden and drawn-out at the same time. One night, she swallowed a bunch of pills and then she took three months to die.

It was several years later, just after my divorce, when I read the book, and I found myself trying some of the exercises described in it. What I found, or at least what I think I found, was that what was killing me inside wasn't losing my wife and my stepson, it was losing Jackie all those years earlier. All of the guilt and uselessness I'd felt through all those hospital visits - they were still with me. Dragging me down and holding me back. I was unable to work harder at my marriage because I already felt like a failure.

I was able, finally, to free myself of those demons. Not by trying to control them and keep them underground, but by giving them free reign, by letting those memories replay in my head and my heart over and over until they had lost the ability to affect me.

This was a lesson I learned in my twenties that I really wish I'd have remembered into my thirties. It really would have been handy.

I feel like I'm beginning to ramble here, so I'll go ahead and get to the point I wanted to make.

I believe that the same thing works for stuff that hasn't happened yet.

As I sit here typing this, in early March 2005, I'm a little worried about the future.

In fact, there are two scenarios that I've found myself worrying about:

If you thought I was going to list them here you were wrong.

Either of these events, were they to occur, would simply devastate me. Luckily they're mutually-exclusive, so I don't have to worry about them both happening at the same time, but I still find myself dreading their possibility. I find myself imagining what I'd say, what I'd do, if things went completely to shit.

What's the worst that could happen?

That's what I imagine. The worst. That's what runs through my head whenever I relax too much. Whenever I catch myself imagining the good that's when the bad possibilities rush through my mind and snap me out of my contentedness.

Now, I've never really been much of a worrier. For a long time I was, after all, invincible. Why would I waste time worrying about that which would simply bounce off my impenetrable shield?

Lately, however, my safety is not assured. I have vulnerabilities. I have my own Kryptonite, and I do find myself worrying about it. Worrying about having my own sanity and my own happiness so out of my control. It's like I'm jumping out of a plane, and I'm not sure I trust the person who packed my parachute.

I think it's getting better, though. And that's the point I wanted to make with this rambling excuse for writing.

Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.

My imagining of these horrible scenarios, as annoying as it is, is actually preparing my mind for their occurance. I know this because there used to be three things that I worried about, but one of them has been castrated. It could happen right now and I'd be able to accept it. I wouldn't fucking like it very much, but it wouldn't be the worst that could happen. I ran it though my head so many times that I actually got a little bored with it.

One down, two to go.

At some point, maybe tomorrow, maybe years from now, the time will come when either (a) one of my worst fears will actually come true, or (b) the danger will pass. If one of my dreaded imaginings comes to pass I hope I'll be ready.

I think I will be. If the worst happens, I may not land gracefully, but I think I can avoid a complete crash.

And if the worst doesn't happen? If something good actually comes from all this?

I don't know how I'd prepare for that. Or if it's even possible.