I can't help but think, sometimes. Even though I know that thinking is, quite often, a really stupid and pointless endeavor, sometimes I just can't stop myself.

Right now, I'm thinking about a couple of sheets of paper, lying on a table. And one paper is overlapping the other, just a little bit. Just at one corner.

On each of those papers, there is a story. The stories are totally isolated, completely self-contained. Just like the paper on which they're written. Except for that one corner, where they overlap.

I like that part. It's my favorite. More than that, I think that it might be the only part that matters.

I suppose it's a good day when the worst thing that happened was that I woke up from a dream too early.

I was at Rich O's, of course. It seemed like it was just after work, but it must have been later than that because it was already dark outside.

I was sitting with NotHideousGirl, making small talk with her as she ate a salad. I was having some beer but I don't know what it was.

When NotHideousGirl was ready to leave, I offered to walk her to her car. Because it was dark, and also because there were hoodlums hanging around the car wash at night.

We went outside, and she didn't have the slightest idea where she had parked. So I took her hand and we started walking. There must have been a million cars spread out across ten thousand parking lots. But that was okay. I'd walk with her and make sure that she got to her car safely. Because I'm nice and shit.

After we'd walked about a gazillion miles away from Rich O's without seeing any cars that looked even remotely like hers, NotHideousGirl suddenly remembered where she'd parked.

"Fuck," she said. "I'm parked right outside the door. We must have walked right by my car."

So we turned around and started walking back toward Rich O's. It was really quite nice. Walking along, holding hands with a pretty girl. All of the hoodlums were staring at us, but they weren't doing any of their catcalling or any of their other usual antics. I was protecting my friend from crap like that. I was useful.

Then, all of a sudden, NotHideousGirl saw something off to the right. I didn't get a good look myself, but there was something going down. It was some gang thing. Some revenge that one gang was exacting on another. I wasn't sure exactly what was going on, but I knew that it was dangerous for NotHideousGirl and me to be there.

NotHideousGirl let go of my hand, and she started running back towards Rich O's. I ran after her as well as I could, but it was like I was running underwater or something. NotHideousGirl was literally running circles around me - desperate to keep moving, but unwilling to leave me behind. As she ran circles around me, she kept grabbing my hand and trying to pull me along with her. I wanted to go faster, but I just couldn't.

After a very long time, we finally got to NotHideousGirl's car. She got in and sped away.

By this time I was pissed. There I'd been, having a perfectly wonderful time, and then those fucking gang-bangers had gone and ruined everything. There I was, in my own fucking dream, and these punks had spoiled everything.

I decided to go and kick all of their punk asses. I started walking back to where the commotion had been taking place, but I woke up.

Those punks got soooooo lucky. I was going to mess them up real good. I was going to grab them by their ankles and swing them around and slam their heads into the ground. I was going to fucking kill them for ruining my sweet hand-holding dream.

But instead, I woke up.

We have such an oddly strained relationship, sleep and I.

I've spent a good portion of the last few years wishing for sleep, but finding it unattainable. And I've spent a very large portion of the last couple of months trying to avoid sleep, but finding it unavoidable.

Tonight, I wish that I could just stay up. Stay awake all night and then somehow manage to function at work tomorrow despite the lack of sleep.

What used to be an escape for me, it's transformed into something else. A nuisance, I guess. A biological obligation that I'd rather do without.

I don't want to sleep tonight. I can't shake the feeling that I might miss something wonderful.

And besides, I've got crap to think about.

Like, a short while ago, in an email to RockGirl, I joked about being tested. And passing that test with flying colors. And being rewarded for passing. It was all fun and games, but there was also truth buried underneath my words.

And now, now I feel like I'm truly being tested. And I don't have the slightest idea what it is I'm being tested for. Friendship? Loyalty? Honesty? I believe that I can (and should!) pass any test for those qualities. But what about the more advanced topics?

What about compassion? What about empathy? What about those things for which there is no right answer, only the illusion of correctness that my own point-of-view and my own perspective brings?

And what if the test is made up entirely of trick questions, only I'm not sure that they're really trick questions at all?

I wish I didn't have to sleep tonight.

I could spend the entire night thinking about what I've seen and heard recently. I could spend the entire night figuring out exactly what it is that this test is supposed to be measuring.

And then I could decide whether I wanted to pass that test or not. And whether I want to cheat or not.

Of course I didn't really say this. The whole thing just reminded me of an old Ren and Stimpy show where they had this conversation.

Because, as everyone knows, I'm such a people person, I left the throne at Rich O's today and acted as Beer Ambassador to a couple who'd never been in there before.

This couple had come in and announced that it was their first time. The bartender gave them the 10-second spiel - Smoking in the bar area, non-smoking everywhere else, draft beers on the blackboard and bottled beers listed at most tables.

I was sitting, as I said, on the throne. Enjoying a yummy Delirium Tremens (1018). After a while, the new dude came in and sat on the sofa to have a smoke and I talked to him for a bit. I asked him what he and his wife had decided on. He was having an NABC beer, and his wife hadn't decided yet. He admitted to me that it was his wife who was the real beer snob of the two of them.

I went out front and talked to his wife for a while. She likes porters and Belgian beers. So I immediately liked her. We discussed the beers on the draft board - there were a couple of pretty good Belgians that she'd never tried before, and even a yummy porter listed. What wasn't listed, even though I knew for a fact that it was available, was Gulden Draak. I talked her into trying a small sample of Delirium Tremens, but I think she'd already made up her mind and so she had a Gulden Draak. I went back to the throne.

I knew that I wanted another beer, but I also knew that another Tremens would be out of the question on an empty stomach, so I had a small sample of something new to me.

Brooklyn Summer Ale

(draft) Clear gold in color. Good heaping head. No detectable aroma. Tasted like watery grass. Not very good. Not very good at all.

My second full beer ended up being a Paulaner Hefeweissbier (358) and then I came home.

Today I've found myself to be in an incredibly good mood.

And why shouldn't I be? The things that are good are great, fantastic even. More than I ever dared to let myself really, really hope for. And the things that aren't so good, well they're pretty much all irrelevant anyway. So fuck'em.

I could count, if I felt like it, I could count the number of times that something good has happened over the last three months. It's a pretty small number. But it's not quantity that matters, it's quality.

I mean, how many times do you really need to win the lottery? For some things, even once is enough. And what about ten times or twenty times? And what if it's a gazillion times better than winning the lottery?

I feel so fucking blessed.

I'm thinking that maybe I died again, on that night back in early May. Maybe I died and was immediately reborn. I certainly don't feel like the same person, and I certainly don't act like the same person, and this damn smile I'm always sporting even keeps me from looking like the same person, so maybe I'm not the same person.

If that's the case, then good riddance. That guy was a real buzzkill.

There are so many things that I want to say.

But not here, not now, not yet.

I keep trying to write the same entry. And I can never get it to come out right. It's very frustrating, because I know that I should be able to do it. But it's like there's a locked door in my head, and all of the words that I need are behind that door, and I don't have a key.

Meanwhile, I think that I've allowed myself to become distracted by certain things. By certain inanities and irrelevancies of life.

I fooled myself into thinking that where I was at, where I was going, that it was at least better than standing still in that gray place. Now, I'm seeing the truth again. I'm still wasting my time, and this illusion of progress has been nothing more than another lie.

I haven't been making my way out of this place. I haven't been making any real progress at all. I've been wandering in circles around an oasis that's just another mirage.

I have this thing I do. Like a test, for girls that I meet at Rich O's. A suitable metaphor probably exists, I just can't think of one right now. I was going to use bar, like the kind you jump over, but if I used the word bar and Rich O's in the same paragraph and they didn't mean the same thing, peoples' heads would start to explode. And that would be gross.

So, I observe women. I've probably mentioned that before. But not all of my observations are strictly sexual. Nope, I'm also doing some subconscious evaluating. Some specific evaluating. And over the last several weeks I've regained enough consciousness about myself and the world around me to be able to actually notice what it is that I'm evaluating.

I've been calling it an intelligence test. I've told myself that's what it is. I've told NotHideousGirl that's what it is. But that's not really what it is. Or that's not all that it is. It's much more than that.

I think, if I had to narrow this test down to one crucial element, to the one thing that it tests for more than anything else, that thing would be the ability of a girl to detect bullshit.

This bullshit detector of mine seems to be foolproof. So that's good. What's bad, however, is that it's dependent on a friend of mine being there at Rich O's.

See, he's the source of the bullshit.

And if a girl falls for his bullshit, then she fails my test. Simple as that. She reveals herself as worthless, at least as anyone who could ever be more than a friend.. At least to me. To my friend, not so much. He eats that shit up. That's why he does what he does. Because sometimes it actually works.

I forget where I was going with this.

I can't for the life of me remember enough about Thursday and Friday to write about. So maybe I'll write about last night and that will jog my memory or something.

Got to Rich O's very early because I'd thought that NotHideousGirl was having car trouble again and I was going to ride her around give her a ride around town. So by the time I was ready to leave, and I found that she was already at Rich O's having dinner, it was too late to turn back.

Oh, yeah. I spent all day Saturday alternating between reinstalling XP on my home computer, and hacking away at this sludge-filled pipe under my kitchen. The XP install went okay, though I had a pretty big scare at one point when it looked like I'd lost two disk drives. The plumbing work went okay too. My kitchen sink now drains normally. But, at about 4:00 Saturday I found myself covered in nasty gray sludge that smelled like sewage. Between sawing through the pipe, and then carrying the pipe outside, and then banging the pipe on the ground to loosen the sludge, I basically showered myself with that nasty crap for two hours.

And two hours is about how long I spent in the real shower, later, before I began to feel clean again. While showering, I wondered if the sludge would either (a) kill me, or (b) bestow upon me some super powers. More on that later.

Anyway.

I got to Rich O's a little after 7:00, and had a Wostyntje (308) and talked to NotHideousGirl for a while. She was in a shitty mood though, and she left pretty quickly. I moved to the sofa and vegged out for a while. I had a couple more Wostyntjes (328) and then I had a beer that was new to me.

Avery Karma Ale

(draft) Clear copperish amber. Average head that dissipated quickly. Aroma almost undetectable, but of apple peels and spices. Flavor started out very weak, but as my tongue became accustomed to it, I ended up like this beer a lot. A 5.2% Belgian session beer. Pretty damn cool.

Then I sat on my swing and had a Schlenkerla Marzen (705). Then I went to bed.

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Let's see, Friday night. Hmmm.

Okay, here's something. My sister Dina and her husband Kenny came in for a while. I had three glasses of Paulaner Hefeweissbier (307) and sat at the island and talked to them for a couple of hours. After that I don't remember what I did. I think I texted some people but they were all being mean and not replying. That would explain my Friday night entry I suppose.

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Because I had Friday off work, I went in to Rich O's on Thursday too. I think it was boring there, except that at one point my friend Eric came in. Also, there were a lot of hot girls around. I don't remember much about Thursday.

Oh, yeah. I had a new beer Thursday night.

Three Floyds Gumballhead

(draft) Had a sample, and was intrigued enough to have a half-pint next. Hazy yellow in color. Good head and great lacing. Aroma was mostly floral, with a touch of the bubble gum scent that was expected because of the beer's name. Flavor was pretty damn good. Intense, but it never quite got to the point where it was overpowering. Not bitter at all. A little weird. I liked it.

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Okay, I'm all caught up now.