1. EVER BEEN GIVEN AN ENGAGEMENT RING?
Nope, given one though.

2. LONGEST RELATIONSHIP?
Depends on how you count. I'll say five years.

3. LAST GIFT YOU RECEIVED?
I got some stuff last Christmas.

4. EVER DROPPED A CELL PHONE?
What a stupid question. Of course I have.

5. WHEN'S THE LAST TIME YOU WORKED OUT?
A long time.

6. THING(S) YOU SPEND A LOT OF MONEY ON?
Eating and drinking.

7. LAST FOOD YOU ATE?
Spaghetti and garlic bread.

8. FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT THE OPPOSITE SEX?
First thing is probably their general shape, until they get closer then I notice eyes.

9. ONE FAVORITE SONG?
Please Forgive Me by David Gray.

10. WHERE DO YOU LIVE?
In my house.

11. HIGH SCHOOL YOU ATTENDED:
Floyd Central.

12. CELL PHONE SERVICE PROVIDER:
Cingular. They're our supplier for work.

13. FAVORITE MALL STORE:
Like I care.

14. LONGEST JOB YOU HAD:
Air Force, nine years.

15. DO YOU OWN A PAIR OF DICE?
Another stupid question. Yes.

16. DO YOU PRANK CALL PEOPLE?:
Caller-ID would have put an end to that, even if becoming an adult hadn't done it already.

17. LAST WEDDING YOU ATTENDED:
Dina and Kenny.

18. FIRST FRIEND YOU'D CALL IF YOU WON THE LOTTERY:
Probably Eric.

19. LAST TIME YOU SAW YOUR BEST FRIEND:
Saw one of them yesterday.

20. FAVORITE FAST FOOD RESTAURANT:
I suppose Wendy's.

21. BIGGEST LIE YOU HAVE EVER HEARD:
It will be different this time.

23. WHERE'S YOUR FAVORITE PLACE TO EAT WITH FRIENDS?
I'm weird. I prefer to eat alone.

24. CAN YOU COOK?
Some things.

25. WHAT CAR DO YOU DRIVE?:
Toyota Pickup, Dodge Intrepid. Chevy Monte Carlo SS if I ever get the exhaust fixed.

26. BEST KISSER:
MixedSignalGirl.

27. LAST TIME YOU CRIED?:
A long time ago, in a galaxy far away.

28. MOST DISLIKED FOODS:
Stuffing.

29. THING YOU LIKE MOST ABOUT YOURSELF:
My ability to entertain myself by taking stupid surveys.

30. THING YOU DISLIKE MOST ABOUT YOURSELF?
Once I lose faith in someone, it's extremely tough for me to get it back.

32. LONGEST SHIFT YOU HAVE WORKED AT A JOB?:
Twenty-four hours or so.

33. FAVORITE MOVIE?
I like lots of movies. Nothing in particular comes to mind.

34. CAN YOU SING?
To my cats.

35. LAST CONCERT ATTENDED?
REO Speedwagon, a million years ago. Or maybe The Violent Femmes, three years ago. Depends on whether the latter could be called a concert or not.

36. LAST KISS?
I should have pressed the issue.

37. LAST MOVIE RENTED?
I don't rent movies. I just buy them. Last one I bought was Say Anything.

38.ONE THING YOU NEVER LEAVE THE HOUSE WITHOUT:
Pants.

39. FAVORITE VACATION SPOT:
Las Vegas.

43. LAPTOP OR DESKTOP COMPUTER?:
The former at work, the latter at home.

44. FAVORITE COMEDIAN?:
Steven Wright is pretty funny. Is he still alive?

45. DO YOU SMOKE?
When I'm on fire.

46. SLEEP WITH OR WITHOUT CLOTHES?
Varies. Usually without.

47. WHO SLEEPS WITH YOU EVERY NIGHT?
My cats take shifts.

48. DO LONG DISTANCE RELATIONSHIPS WORK?:
Not in my experience.

49. HOW MANY TIMES HAVE YOU BEEN PULLED OVER BY THE POLICE?
I dunno. Maybe once when I was a kid. Or maybe never.

50. PANCAKES OR FRENCH TOAST?
Pancakes.

51. DO YOU LIKE COFFEE?:
Blech.

52 HOW DO YOU LIKE YOUR EGGS?
Scrambled.

53. DO YOU BELIEVE IN ASTROLOGY?:
I acknowledge its existence, if that's what you mean.

54. LAST PERSON YOU TALKED TO ON THE PHONE?
If I don't count work people, then SassyGirl.

55. LAST PERSON ON YOUR MISSED CALL LIST?:
SassyGirl.

56. WHAT WAS THE LAST TEXT MESSAGE YOU RECIEVED?:
"Don't be such a stranger!"

58. NUMBER OF PILLOWS?:
Two.

59. WHAT ARE YOU WEARING RIGHT NOW?:
Imperial Stormtrooper costume. Crotchless, of course.

60. PICK A LYRIC, ANY LYRIC:
"This year's love had better last."

61. WHAT KIND OF JELLY DO YOU LIKE ON YOUR PB & J?:
I neither know nor care.

62. CAN YOU PLAY POOL?
Better than you can, probably.

63. CAN YOU SWIM?
I could postpone drowning for a while.

64. FAVORITE ICE CREAM?:
Vanilla-fudge swirl.

65. DO YOU LIKE MAPS?
Yet another stupid question. Okay, fine - maps are cool.

66. TELL ME A RANDOM FACT ABOUT YOURSELF:
Sometimes I can't think of a good answer to a survey question.

68. EVER ATTEND A THEME PARTY?:
Do Halloween parties count? If so, then yes.

69. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE SEASON?
Summer.

70. LAST TIME YOU LAUGHED AT SOMETHING STUPID?
When TremensGirl told me some stupid jokes tonight.

71. WHAT TIME DID YOU WAKE UP THIS MORNING ?
6:00.

72. BEST THING ABOUT WINTER?:
Snow.

73. LAST TIME A COP GAVE YOU A TICKET?:
In 1996 or so, for not having insurance.

75. NAME OF YOUR FIRST PET?:
Tiger. He was a cat. Bet you didn't see that one coming.

76. DO YOU THINK PIRATES ARE COOL OR OVERRATED?:
Fictional pirates are cool. Real-life pirates seem to be assholes though. What with all the raping and murdering.

77. WHAT ARE YOU DOING THIS WEEKEND??
Waiting.

78. BIRTHDATE
February 20th.

79. WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE:
A writer.

85. ARE YOU ON A LAPTOP?:
No.

87. ARE YOU SMILING?:
Always.

89. DO YOU MISS SOMEONE RIGHT NOW?
A couple of people.

90. IF YOU COULD GO ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD WHERE WOULD YOU GO?
Some warm deserted beach would be pretty nice.

92. ARE YOU IN HIGH SCHOOL?:
No, I'm in my house.

93. DO YOU HAVE A CRUSH?:
A couple.

94. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE NAME?
Belvedere Jehosephat.

95. WHAT COLOR IS YOUR BATHING SUIT?:
Technically, they're trunks. And they're yellow.

96. DOES YOUR SCHOOL START IN AUGUST?
What's with all the school questions?

97. DID YOU GO ON VACATION LAST MONTH?:
Took vacation from work. Didn't go anywhere though.

98. HAVE YOU EVER BEEN ON A CRUISE?:
Yes. One of those barefoot cruise thingies.

99. DO YOU HAVE A SISTER
Two of them.

100. ARE YOU UPSTAIRS?
It depends. I'm not in my basement, but I'm on the ground floor of my house. Does that count as upstairs?

101. ARE YOU IN LOVE?
Absolutely.

102. HAVE YOU EVER BEEN IN THE HOSPITAL?
Yes, a few times.

103. DO YOU WISH YOU COULD SEE ANYONE PARTICULAR RIGHT NOW?
A few people come immediately to mind.

104. WHAT JEWELRY ARE YOU WEARING?
None.

105. WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO AFTER THIS?
Watch TV.

So I've been toying with the idea of quitting this blogging thing.

I have this urge to quit, every now and then. This feeling of futility about what I'm doing here. I usually get over it quickly enough, and I'll probably get over it again.

I've been blogging for almost exactly four years now. It's been a lot of fun, most of the time. It's been very therapeutic, a lot of the time. But I've been wondering, a lot lately, if maybe I've run out of things to say here.

See, I have no grief. None. And this is a problem because the only things I've ever written that were worth a shit were those things that either dealt with grief, or were at least written with grief in the background. As context.

And now? There's no grief. There's joy.

And you know what joy is?

Fucking boring, that's what it is.

---

I thought of the funniest thing today. I emailed it to RockGirl, and that's as far as it went. I certainly can't write about it here, because the target of my humor reads this fucking blog. And she, if she were to read my funny thought, she would think that it was cruel. And she'd be right. It is a cruel thought. But it's still funny.

---

This whole happiness thing - it's new to me. I don't know how to write about it. I probably could write about it, if I had sufficient motivation, but I don't.

I think that, I think that being sad is what made me write. And I think that being happy is having the opposite effect. Urging me to stop. Before I fuck up a good thing.

It's happened before, after all.

I'm not really sure which was the first. I've got it narrowed down to two girls, two occasions, but the passage of time has blurred my memory to the point where I can no longer be certain about the order of things. Like, I'm pretty sure that I kissed both those girls after that comet killed all the dinosaurs, but I wouldn't want to bet anything substantial on it.

So I don't remember which was my first real kiss. But I do remember them both. They were passionate, each of them. And full of promises that neither of us was ready to keep. There was none of this sweet and gentle and perfunctory crap that I've been so wont to do lately. To show that I'm a good guy, at least at first. Back then, a kiss was all you were going to get, so you damn sure needed to make the best of it.

I'm pretty sure that I could remember all of my first kisses. I don't mean that I could list them right now off the top of my head, but if I thought about it long enough, I probably could. And if I heard a name or saw a face or had something like that come along to help jog my memory, then I definitely could.

I was thinking tonight about a few of my first kisses. From the drunken and playful and inevitable kiss of that night last Winter, to that fascinated experimental kiss a couple of weeks ago, to that romantic kiss in Las Vegas in June, to that initially timid kiss that somehow lasted an entire weekend in late 2004, to that incredible indefinable kiss a few months earlier that still makes me weak in the knees when I think about it.

I don't know why I've never written about kissing before. About lips. I've written about hands, and I've written about eyes, but not lips. I don't know why. Maybe, maybe kissing just seems too personal, even for me to write about. Maybe hand-holding and eye-gazing are just fine, but kissing belongs in the same realm as sex, and I never write about sex. Nobody wants to read about that - they only want to have it. Maybe kisses are the same way.

Anyway, I like kissing. It's my favorite. I just thought I'd share that little tidbit. You know, just in case anyone wants to make out or something.

It's late. I need to try to get some sleep. But I somehow know, without even trying, that sleep is going to elude me tonight.

---

How many people, I wonder, spend their entire lives wondering what they want? Suspecting, theorizing, guessing. Picking goals at random, or because their parents did it, or because they saw it on TV or read it in a book.

---

Wouldn't it be ironic, I wondered this afternoon, if I quit my job and sold all of my possessions and moved a thousand miles away?

---

The whole thing is so fucking lopsided. I hate that it's like this. I hate that I can only find clarity for a couple of hours on a cool Sunday afternoon, before the fog and the haze creeps back into my life.

And yet I always welcome it, this confusion and this fuzziness.

Because everything is hidden in that fog.

I'm looking, right now as I type this sentence, at a picture of the most beautiful woman I've ever known. The most fascinating person I've ever known.

She's there, in the fog. And I'm there too. But we're not there together. We're both alone. Arms outstretched. Groping.

I wonder if we will ever find each other.

I wonder.

I spent the first half of Sunday not doing a damn thing worth noting. That's my privilege, and I don't regret it.

Then I spent an hour or so out messing with my Monte Carlo. The engine wouldn't turn over, so I had to hook the battery charger up before it would start. I guess maybe my battery has gone bad after all. Oh well, that's not a big deal compared to the water pump that I still hope to have replaced before I die of old age, or even compared to the window switch that continues to vex me.

I picked up the half-dozen or so pieces of the broken switch that I could find, and sometime this week I'll return them to the person I bought the switch from. I've been promised a replacement, but I'm not feeling very optimistic. For now, I've gone ahead and put the original switch back in, because at least it works, even if it is a pain in the ass to use.

After I'd let the Monte Carlo run for a half and hour or so, just to keep things lubricated, I put it back into the garage and went into the house.

That's when something good happened.

I got to spend almost two hours talking to MixedSignalGirl. Until the battery on her phone died. It was just incredibly good to talk to her. It was exactly what I needed.

(By the way, Dina. Remember that girl who was afraid to ever even meet you? She sends all her love and condolences to you. Trust me, that's a really big deal.)

So I spent a fantastic couple of hours on the phone, then I spent a horrible couple of hours as, once again, the truth of the (lack of a) situation between us ripped fresh wounds into me. But it was, overall, pretty fucking wonderful to talk to her.

Then, at about 6:00, I went to this Mac's bar to meet up with SassyGirl and JauntyGirl and EuropeanDude. We had a very nice and pleasant time together. I had some Newcastles (7605) and we all got to see The World's Craziest Guy in action. That guy is probably worth an entry all on his own. Maybe I'll do that some other time.

Okay, fine. I'll write something. Don't particularly feel like it though. Plus it's mostly irrelevant. And boring. You've been warned.

---

Friday, I took a day of vacation, as I had a bunch of shit to do. I guess I did the mandatory things, such as re-register my cars and have lunch with NotHideousGirl. The car thing went much more smoothly than I'd expected because I found out that they've discontinued the emissions tests here. So that was cool. Lunch was fairly smooth as well, though there's still something wrong between us. Something that's not quite definable but still noticeable and disconcerting and irritating.

Anyway, at lunch I had a couple pints of Newcastle (7521) and then a Diet Coke while NotHideousGirl and I talked and pretended that nothing was wrong. Oh yeah, I also got to see BikerGirl for the first time in a couple of weeks. So that was nice.

While we were sitting at The Pub, my phone rang. Vibrated, actually, but whatever.

It was SassyGirl! Yay! But I sent her to voicemail because I didn't want the first time I'd seen NotHideousGirl in two weeks to be interrupted.

So, after lunch, I went and took care of some more shit, then I stopped at Rich O's. I ordered a Spezial (1712) and called to check my voicemail.

SassyGirl is in town! Yay and yay!

I called her and she said that they'd come to Rich O's and meet me. The "they" ended up being SassyGirl, JauntyGirl, and some European dude who I never saw before. So I gave SassyGirl a huge hug, and I gave JauntyGirl a medium-sized hug, and I shook EuropeanDude's hand. It was all quite touching and moving.

SassyGirl and I got to talking about some of the changes that had taken place at Rich O's since her last visit. The most noticeable being the new pint glasses with the NABC logo on them, and the sampler trays with their miniature NABC glasses. She hadn't seen the sampler trays, so I asked FutureDude to show us one.

I guess I wasn't clear enough, or FutureDude didn't hear well enough, but instead of just bring a tray for us to ooh and aww over, he bought a full sampler tray. Complete with six beer samples.

Oh well, right? Beer is beer. Couldn't let it go to waste.

I ended up drinking the samples of NABC's Croupier (8), Bob's 15B Porter (124), and Community Dark(224). And I didn't hate any of them. The Bob's especially seemed to have undergone yet another transformation since I'd had it last. It was quite good.

I ended up having another Spezial (1732) before SassyGirl and team left to go to some HickFest in my hometown. Then I came home and took a nap.

---

Friday night I was, not surprisingly, hung-over. It wasn't so much the quantity of beer I'd had earlier, it was the mixing of all those different styles. So I went to Rich O's and sat on the throne and had a few Diet Cokes. Once I felt better I had a Spezial (1752) and then a Paulaner (409).

There were people there and stuff, but I never really felt like talking to anyone, so I didn't.

---

On Saturday I went to The Pub to see BikerGirl. I had lunch and a Newcastle (7541) and then a BBC Jefferson's Reserve Bourbon Barrel Stout (521). I also bought the DVD set of Heroes season one, and I'm pretty excited about that.

---

Saturday night, Rich O's was about half full. That was the good news. The bad news was that the crowd that was there was about 90% weirdoes. Luckily, the island was unoccupied so I sat there. I had a Spezial (1772). After a while, the weirdoes ran TremensGirl off the sofa so she came and joined me. We talked a couple of minutes before WomanRepellant came in and joined us. Sure enough, TremensGirl moved back to the sofa at the first opportunity.

(I just left out a very relevant thing that I did.)

So I talked to WomanRepellant for a while and had another Spezial (1792). Once he'd gone, and once The Weirdo King had vacated the throne, I moved over there and sat. Mostly I just listened to TremensGirl and this one blonde girl talk about how they think various celebrities are smoking hot. How they managed to think about other hot celebrities with me sitting right there in their midst, I'll never know.

At some point I had another Spezial (1812) and then I switched to Diet Coke for the rest of the night.

After last-call, TremensGirl and the blonde girl and her boyfriend wanted to go over to this Jack's bar. I wasn't planning to go, but then about 10 seconds after they'd left MusicalYuppieDude came in and he also invited me over there. So I went. I had a couple more Diet Cokes and mostly just listened to everyone else talk.

The blonde girl guessed my age at 30. I gave her another guess, and she guessed 34. So I told her that I loved her, but really I just like her a a friend.

(I just left out several more incredibly relevant things that happened.)

Then I came home and ate some catfish tenders from Famous Dave's that I'd bought earlier and watched the unaired pilot of Heroes from my new DVD set.

---

I told you it was boring.

When I can't and/or won't bring myself to write about anything important, all that left is the unimportant stuff.

I did some things. I saw some people, drank some beer, ate some food, took a nap, saw some more people, and drank some more beer.

But it was all, just, irrelevant. Completely out of context with my life. Just tiny little inconsequential things, keeping the clock company as it ticks and ticks and ticks.

Meanwhile, I'm starting to get a little excited. I definitely need to stop that feeling. For excitement only leads to disappointment. Still, both of those things are at least relevant.

I'm in such a good mood. That's relevant, too.

Hot.

European.

Lesbians.

Every second. Every minute. Every hour and day and month and year. Every life. They happen exactly one time. You only get one shot.

We all know this. Awareness of this simple fact is always there, in our minds. At varying levels.

Sometimes this awareness lies buried below the mundane minutiae of living. Sometimes it's pushed aside as we play things safe. Sometimes, sometimes it's the most obvious and obnoxious thing in our lives, and it consumes our every thought and word and action.

There are so many things that I've missed. Opportunities that I've squandered. Chances that I've not taken. Feelings that I've denied. Hints that I've ignored.

Gone, forever. All of them. Time lost to its own passage.

Not again, I tell myself.

I'll take that chance, I promise myself.

We'll see, I suppose.

It's all coming together. Everything that I ever wanted and dreaded and wished for and needed and craved and feared - it's all going to happen. There will come a time when I'll have to either act, or not. Say something, or not. Do something, or not.

And that second, when I have to decide, when I'm once again given an opportunity to take that chance that I haven't taken, so many times, that second will pass quickly into the past with all its brethren.

That moment in time will happen once, and then it will be gone forever.

I wonder what I'll do, during that precious second.