A little quiz copied from another 'blog:

I am not: quite as messed up as I seem to be
I love: quirks and eccentricities
I hate: conceitedness
I fear: rejection
I hope: for the best, but expect the worse
I hear: lies
I crave: honesty
I regret: the little things
I cry: rarely
I care: as long as it's not too much trouble
I always: try to make people feel better
I feel alone: occasionally
I listen: for hidden meanings
I hide: from my own feelings
I drive: fairly conservatively
I dance: like a retarded child
I write: to relieve stress
I breathe: pretty much all the time
I act: like it doesn't bother me
I miss: the good old days
I learn: something every day
I feel: a lot more than I used to
I know: that there's a lot I don't know
I say: pretty funny things sometimes
I succeed: at failing
I fail: at succeeding
I sleep: fitfully
I wonder: what's out there
I want: to believe
I worry: that others worry about me
I have: to pee
I fight: for people that probably don't need my help
I need: acceptance
I am: not anti-social, dammit!
I think: thou dost protest too much

Last year I spent Easter weekend in Omaha. Not because of the holiday, well not directly because of the holiday, but because my company gives us Good Friday off.

So I went to Omaha to see some of my old friends and to just get away from Indiana for a while.

This year I'm thinking that I need to take another trip.

My last trip, to Las Vegas in November, was fun but not particularly relaxing. My own paranoia saw to that.

This year, as I said, I think I'd like to take another trip. Now I just have to decide where.

I could go back to Omaha, though as I said last Spring, most of my old friends and old stomping-grounds are gone or unrecognizable.

I could go to Seattle. I know that I'd enjoy the hell out of that, but it's a very long trip - I'd spend about half my time traveling to and fro.

I suppose I could go back to Las Vegas, but that's a pretty long trip as well, plus it looks like I'll be going there for a week in May. (That just reminded me, I was asked a very odd question about my Las Vegas plans recently. It actually made me a little paranoid.)

Right now, as I type this, I think I'm actually leaning towards Portland Maine. This is a place I've never been before, so I'd get to color it in on my map along with maybe New Hampshire and Vermont if I got really ambitious.

I'd also get to check out The Great Lost Bear, a place that Roger from Rich O's recently visited and endorsed.

Okay, now I'm getting excited. I'm going to start checking fares and stuff.

The other day (Saturday) I was talking with my cousin Jeff. He told me that he'd just watched some movie that I never heard of, and that some girl I never heard of was in it.

So the girl he was talking about was the girl in Joe Dirt.

This got me thinking that I hadn't watched that movie in several years, so I decided to find it and watch it. I know I own it on at least VHS, and probably on DVD, but I couldn't find my copy. Oh, well, right?

Just about when I gave up looking for my copy, Comedy Central started an airing of, you guessed it, Joe Dirt.

So I watched it, then I went to Rich O's where, to my great surprise, sitting right there at the kiddie table was, you guessed it, Joe Fucking Dirt!

Mullet and all.

Where's Rod Serling when you need him?

Don't you do it.

I'm not ready yet.

I need some warning, some time to prepare.

Don't you do it. Close the phone. Push away from the keyboard. Put the pen down. Burn the tickets.

I want it too much. It's been too long. But I'm still not ready.

Please don't.

(This entry is in no way related to the previous one. Seriously.)

I decided today that I needed to get myself an enemy.

My life has been sorely lacking in enemies for as long as I can remember. Sure, I've had my little spats and my occasional tiffs, but true enemies have been very few and very far apart.

I'm not talking about my shit-list here, wherein people are added and subtracted, elevated and demoted, depending on my mood and my current level of pissedoffedness. I'm talking about actual tried and true enemies. People that have managed to prove to me that they're beyond mere dislike, beyond the point where I can simply ignore them. These are the people that I actually wish would drop from the face of the Earth. And land on a bunch of shit-covered spikes.

The sooner the better.

Today, I picked myself an enemy. It really wasn't that difficult of a choice. This asshole has been nothing but a thorn in my side since the day I met him. This asshole has such a high opinion of himself that it makes everyone around him sick just talking to him. This asshole has had so many things in life just handed to him that he's come to believe that he has a God-given right to everything he wants. And to everything anyone else wants. It's all his.

This asshole thinks he won, but he didn't win shit. He twisted, he corrupted, he rewrote reality into something wherein he gets to be the best.

Someday his facade will be torn away, and he will be revealed as the small-minded little-dicked waste of flesh that he really is.

On that day I will laugh my ass off. I hope I'm there to see it.

I suppose you'll read this and the gist of my words will somehow make through that thick layer of fat and dead cells you have in place of a brain, and you'll think, "Damn, I'm sure glad that's not directed at me!"

Well guess what, asshole, it is directed squarely at you.

I ask for one fucking thing in the entire time I've known you - hell, maybe one thing in your entire miserable life, and what do you do?

You use it to further your own fucked up drug-induced self-propagandizing agenda.

You use it as ammumnition in your ongoing battle to annoy and belittle and ostracize every person you meet. You take my request and twist it around and use it to make me look like the bad guy. Like I'm the one with the problem.

I decided a while ago that if you fucked this up for me I'd never speak to you again. Now you've managed to fuck it up royally, and I find myself unable to avoid you. Some things are unfortunately more important than that which you've corrupted, and I'll continue to honor those obligations.

But know this, you incredibly immature fuckwad of a human being: You will not be trusted by me again. Not with anything.

I can hold a grudge a looooooooong time. Just watch. Asshole.

Oil and water. Chlorine and ammonia.

Some things cannot mix, and some things you should not try to mix.

Such is the case with some of the people who populate my life.

It wasn't always this way. As recently as a few years ago I was exactly like everybody I hung around with, except for the druggies who were nice enough to keep it to themselves for the most part.

Now, however, I find myself in several semi-overlapping circles, and often I think that the only overlap is me.

Lead and iodine.

I'd no more put MethBoy in the same room as MisunderstoodGirl than I'd take NotGeorge to the next Keithley reunion.

Beer before whiskey, mighty risky.

I'd no more put LaptopGirl in the same room with VigilanteGirl than I'd put my sister's fiancé in the same room with her ex-husband. Or SpoonsGirl with any single and lonely guy.

Alcohol and ibuprofen.

I could go on and on, and that's only sticking to my familiar and social circles. If I considered the work circle the number of potentially disastrous combinations would approach infinity.

I was going somewhere with this, but I forget where.

Just a little bored yesterday.

Saint Fucking Valentine's Day is tomorrow.

I think that some people, usually the people with vaginas, must have a kind of secondary internal clock - sort of like circadian rhythm but an annual one - that kicks in each February.

An alarm goes off around February 10th and these people start scrambling like mad to make sure they're not alone on the 14th.

I have a different kind of goal for Valentine's Day. The goal of not doing anything so stupid I'll regret it for a very long time.

Twenty years ago tomorrow I proposed to my ex-wife. Seemed like a good idea at the time, but that one action, fueled in part by the timing of the holiday, proved to be disastrous.

Last night I did my best to enjoy myself despite feeling like a complete asshole. I managed to do okay. I had a CorsenDonk Christmas Ale while talking with CoffeeDude, and after a while NotGeorge came in and I had a Robert The Bruce and a Tunnel Vision.

The Valentine Effect was very evident last night. Rich O's was the site of a nearly constant stream of attractive single women, all looking for whatever it is they're looking for when they get desperate. NotGeorge is a good person to share nights like last night with - his radar for pretty girls is highly accurate and useful.

So I ended up having a good, but not great, night at Rich O's. The lack of sleep begun the night before, combined with the necessity of again having to run the emotional gauntlet that is MixedSignalGirl, had put me in an irritated mood. Then the parade of lovelies and the good conversations picked me back up to normal.

Hey,

The restraint I displayed tonight surprised even me.

Some day I hope you'll appreciate the effort I put forth.

It was for your own good, after all.