My original plan, such at it was, had been to leave town after work Friday. I think it was Tuesday or Wednesday that I decided that I really needed to get away for a day or two. I needed to get away and, more importantly, other people needed me to be away.

But then, Thursday night, I talked to WomanRepellant. He was having some trouble with his computer, and we arranged that he'd call me Saturday morning so I could come and take a look at it.

So that kept me local for Friday night, and I'm glad that it did, because part two of Friday night was fantastic.

Well Saturday morning came and Saturday morning went without a call from my friend. He'd had a photo shoot scheduled for that morning, and he was supposed to call me at 10:00 or so when it was over. I tried to call him at 11:30. The phone just rang and rang. Change of plans, I figured.

So I found myself free to leave, and even eager to leave, but I didn't have a destination in mind. I chose Covington on a whim, more or less. I'd been there in the Spring and enjoyed it. I guess some deep recess of my brain might have thought that I might run into EyesGirl again. And I definitely knew I'd be able to have some Moerlein OTR. So, Covington it was.

The drive up was uneventful. I'd been hoping for some email or telephone companionship, but I think I screwed that up back in July. Oops.

After I'd arrived, and checked into a hotel room that was much more expensive than I'd hoped, about fifty metric butt-tons of drama ensued back home. I basically spent the rest of the day and night talking or typing into my Blackberry, trying to either ease or repair or at least keep up with various drama. So that was the context behind everything else I did Saturday night.

My hotel was conveniently located with a Skyline Chili across one street and a White Castle across another. It was also within walking distance of the tourist section of Covington. So, after a quick meal at Skyline, I walked up to the Cock & Bull bar. I'd gone there in April, so I supposed it was my Official Covington Bar or something.

And now I guess I'll have to continue this entry later.

I imagine people coming to this blog today, the ones who know me personally, and they're asking me the unspoken question, "Dave, what are you writing about all the drama from yesterday?"

And my silent response is, "Which drama? There were two distinct instances. Doesn't matter though, because I'm not writing shit until things settle. Maybe not even then."

So there.

Anyway, I'm back home from Covington. More on that later.

Once there was this guy. He really liked this girl, and he invited this girl do to everything with him. I mean everything.

Also, there was this other guy and this other girl. They'd been married for twenty-five years.

The moral of this story is that somewhere, between taking a shit and going on a cruise, there is a sweet spot. One at which invitations are perfectly acceptable and perhaps even expected. Maybe even welcomed.

But I'll be damned if I have any idea what that sweet spot might me. It's there somewhere, though.

Anyway, I think I'm going to Covington now. By myself.

A few minutes later I was feeling a zillion times better.

I was sitting in LaptopGirl's dining room (see the comic two entries ago), drinking a skunked beer, and finally getting to see LaptopGirl. It had been one day short of five weeks since I'd last seen her, a time period also known as an asstillion lifetimes.

I will concede that it should have been stressful for me. But, compared to the discussions going on at Rich O's, it wasn't stressful at all. Plus it was just a huge relief to get to see LaptopGirl again. It was all so non-stressful, in fact, that I nearly fell asleep.

The skunked beer I had? It was a new beer for me.

Molson Golden

(bottle) Clear fizzy yellow. Thin head that hung in there pretty well. The aroma was of armpits and feet - it was skunked. Mouthfeel was thin. No flavor to speak of, though there was a hoppy sharpness when it first entered the mouth. No detectable finish except a coating skunkiness. I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy.

BigWheelGirl was there also, and she and LaptopGirl and I hung out and talked for a couple of hours. At one point LaptopGirl wanted to go to Rich O's. BigWheelGirl didn't want to go, and I already had everything I needed right there, so we didn't go.

At one point I went out to my car and got a bottle of good beer. LaptopGirl and I split a bottle of Schlenkerla Marzen (4697), and I think BigWheelGirl had water or something.

Once LaptopGirl's son (LaptopSon?) woke up crying, I was ushered out pretty quickly, so I came home. I sat on my swing and had another bottle of Marzen (4714) and thought about good things.

Then I remembered that I hadn't eaten anything all day so I went to Taco Bell.

The stress level started rising as soon as I left my house. And it grew and it grew and it grew until I left Rich O's.

It was still too soon. It was still too much. I'd thought it I might be okay with being there at night, but I was wrong.

Anyway, I got there at 8:30 or so. It wasn't too crowded, though what crowd there was had occupied those places where I'd wanted to sit. Places where I could eat and maybe be ignored for a while. I didn't want to get into any conversations. I certainly didn't want any damn encouraging words. I just wanted to wait for LaptopGirl. She being the entire reason I was risking my sanity by being there in the first place.

What I ended up doing was sitting on the sofa for a bit. I said hello to TremensGirl and MusicalYuppieDude. At about the time I ordered an NABC Flat Tyre (1029), this one dork left the bar so I moved up there and ordered a little pizza. But then this other dork left the sofa so I moved back there. I'd decided that having my back to the entrance probably wasn't the most brilliant thing for me to do.

Then the subject started being discussed by those around me, and I felt myself starting to freak out.

Then LaptopGirl emailed me that she wasn't coming to Rich O's after all. So I paid my tab and left, donating my little pizza to whoever might want it.

So I figured that I might as well write something. Just for kicks, and stuff.

I wrote an entry this afternoon. It's still in my drafts folder, nowhere near ready for posting. It wasn't supposed to be a depressing entry, but that's how it turned out. So it won't be getting posted anytime soon, not without major revisions.

One of the things I was thinking about, as I sat on my swing tonight, was how almost everyone is the same. Guys think they're cool. Girls think they're cute. Almost everyone thinks they're better than they really are. But, they're not. And they're not unusual or uncommon or unique either. Most people may as well have been born via cookie-cutter.

Is it so strange, I wonder, that when I finally meet those few girls who are actually different than almost everyone else, that I fall for them?

---

In my entry that I wrote today and didn't post, one of the things I mentioned was that SassyGirl had been in town to visit, and that I'd totally blown it with her. I mean, her timing really sucked. And I didn't return her calls, and I didn't go to Rich O's to see her.

I hoped that she would forgive me, eventually, though I doubted that she would.

But then today she called me, and then I called her back. She was still in town.

Yay!

So I went to Rich O's after work to see her.

SassyGirl was my best friend for a long time. Now I get to see her maybe once every six months. That's not nearly enough.

---

A week or so ago I got some publicity for my pool blog. And I got a lot of additional traffic. So much traffic, in fact, that now my server keeps crashing, and my hosting company is threatening to cancel my account.

So, that sucks.

And, right now as I type this, my email isn't working. That royally sucks, because I'm kinda in the middle of a conversation with LaptopGirl, I think.

---

People keep thinking that I mad or sad when I'm not. It's totally understandable, I suppose. At least the sadness thing is. I'm sad a lot of the time.

But I'm hardly ever mad, so I don't know where that accusation comes from.

NotHideousGirl was a champion at thinking that I was mad. But I never was. Until she accused me of it enough to make it self-fulfilling.

UPSDude did the same thing once. He accused me of being mad at him. I told him that I wasn't, but he kept accusing me, over and over, of being mad at him. About a gazillion times he did this, until finally I was mad at him.

---

I really really really want to go somewhere this weekend. Just get away from here for a few hours. I don't know where to go, though.

---

Hmmm, I thought I might have more to write. Maybe later.

Somewhere today, I'm not sure exactly where except that it was at a Subway, something amazing happened.

See, HatGirl was there, and so was LaptopGirl.

HatGirl, I haven't seen in four whole days. That might not seem like a lot, but four days without seeing HatGirl is like a jillion years without seeing most people.

And, speaking of a jillion years, I haven't seen LaptopGirl for at least that long, since right after the first primitive life-forms invented photosynthesis and started pumping oxygen into the atmosphere.

I wonder if, back then, the other primitive life-forms held big demonstrations to complain about all that oxygen polluting the air and causing global cooling.

Anyway.

Having LaptopGirl and HatGirl in the same place at the same time - pretty cool, right?

Except for one little tiny thing.

I wasn't there. So that sucked.

HatGirl was so lucky that she got to see LaptopGirl. LaptopGirl was so lucky that she got to see HatGirl. All those people at that Subway were so lucky that they got to see both of them.

Me, I didn't see shit. I sat here at work like a chump.

In a way, I suppose that the entire universe got lucky as well. Because there was a very real chance that, by having LaptopGirl and HatGirl in such close proximity to each other, there was a chance that a singularity might have formed. A black-hole of loveliness that could have devoured everything that existed.

So whew!

Maybe I was lucky that the universe didn't get destroyed in an inescapable infinite well of awesomeness, but I don't feel very lucky, because I wasn't at that fucking Subway.

One of the things I've wanted to write about here, when things got slow enough and when I didn't feel like writing anything interesting, was this:

Anyway, it's got this auto-spelling feature. What happens is that I press keys like I'm spelling something, and it guesses what I'm trying to spell.

Sometimes this works quite well, but sometimes it sucks.

My own name, for example, is spelled with the keys 4-?-7-1. But the word Dave isn't what it decides that I'm typing. Nope, in its minuscule hardwired brain, it decides that I'm typing the word face.

There are many other examples. One of which is that the keys 5-3-2-? can spell hits, guys, guts, or huts.

It always gives me a choice, but far too often I forget to look at the presented choices. I just take the default. Which is quite often wrong. Which quite often makes me look like an idiot.

But that's not even the worst thing about the auto-spelling. The worst thing is that, I know this one girl named Amanda, and when I type her name into my Blackberry, it decides that what I'm really trying to type is the word Smands.

Smands is the default choice it gives me for the keys ?-9-?-8-4-?.

How stupid is that?

Smands wouldn't even make a cute pet nickname, were I so inclined to use one.

Also, a while ago I needed to type the name Heinlein into my Blackberry.

At that point, upon getting 5-1-3-8-'-1-3-8 as input, the auto-spell circuits overheated and the entire Blackberry burst into flames.

What a piece of shit, it never even heard of Robert Heinlein.