Ours is a strange and wonderful relationship.

She's strange, and I'm wonderful.

Or maybe vice-versa. I guess it's all a matter of perspective.

Thirty percent of the time, I worry about one scenario. Another thirty percent of the time, I worry about pretty much the opposite scenario.

The rest of the time, everything is fine. Good, in fact.

Forty percent goodness. I've known so-called happily married couples who couldn't make that claim.

I don't feel like writing about last night at Rich O's, or about tonight at Rich O's. Or about my ongoing computer and plumbing woes. I don't really feel like writing about anything at all. But I suppose that I should, so that my fan has something to read.

I did a little experiment the other day in which I, once again, confirmed my hypothesis that people are mean. I don't know why I continue to lie to myself about this very obvious fact of life. But I do. I lie to myself and then I keep trying to prove myself wrong, and I keep ending up disappointed when I prove myself right instead.

I mean, I know deep in my soul that people are mean. So why does it still surprise me?

And the closer I feel to a person, the more disappointed I become when they turn out to be mean. Every fucking time. I don't get it. I should be totally used to this crap by now. I should totally stop trying to prove myself wrong. Arguing with myself is a no-win situation no matter which side ends up being right in the end.

This is a crappy entry. It makes it seem like I'm in a bad mood or something. But I'm not.

You ever want a rewind button for your life?

I want one right now.

I want the last hour of my back.

So, I think that I've mentioned before that my spiffy new kitchen sink doesn't drain very quickly. In fact, it's pretty much a race between draining and evaporating. I've gone to bed at midnight, with a full sink, and gotten up at 9:00 with an almost drained sink.

My plan was to get a plumber over here this Friday to fix the thing. But my recent computer woes caused me to change those plans. I didn't want to spend a zillion dollars on a plumber and then not have any money left over to fix the computer.

So, like I said, I changed my plans.

I went to the hardware store and bought one of those drain snake thingies. Never before have I felt so masculine. Except maybe that one time when I managed to shit out half my body weight.

Then, when I got home, I dismantled the pipes under my sink and, after much trial and error, figured out how to use the snake thingy without somehow burning my house down. Problem was, I extended all 25 feet of that thing into my pipe, and when I retracted it and reassembled the pipes my sink still wouldn't drain.

Luckily for me, my sister's husband Kenny is a Mr. Fixit. I talked to him, and he gave me a couple of ideas for things to try next. First among those ideas was to climb up onto my roof and see if the vent pipe might be clogged. Second among those ideas was to go into my basement and start cutting into pipes.

I chose the easier idea. I climbed up onto my roof with a flashlight and the aforementioned drain snake thingy.

Shining the light into the vent pipe revealed nothing, so I started snaking the, um, snake thingy down into the vent.

Oh, I guess I should say how to use the thing.

1. You loosen this thumbscrew at the thingamabob end and start cramming the coil/wire into the pipe.

2. When you feel an obstruction, you tighten the thingamabob-end thumbscrew and start cranking the handle on the housing doohickey while applying gentle pressure on the coil/wire.

3. When you feel the coil/wire going further into the pipe, go back to step 1.

At least, that's the way it's supposed to happen.

That is not, however, the way I chose to do it.

Nope, what I did was complete step two, loosen the thumbscrew, and then watch in awe as the entire 25 feet of coil/wire slid completely out of the housing doohickey and disappeared down my vent pipe.

Oops.

To review:

1. My kitchen sink still will not drain, so whatever has been clogging its drain line is still clogging its drain line.

2. Also clogging its drain line is a 25-foot length of coil/wire.

3. I suck.

My home computer has died. At least some part of it has died.

So, until I get it repaired and/or replaced, I will be a little harder to reach. Especially to those of you accustomed to IMing me.

*coughStalkerGirlcough*

I'll still have access to my email via my work computer and my blackberry though, so all is not lost.

Depending on how much this crap ends up costing, it could be as long as two weeks before I have a real computer at home again.

I feel like a caveman.

This was a shithead at Pizza Hut today. Harassing all the customers about buying something or signing up for something. I don't know what he wanted, and I didn't care. I just wanted to pick up my pizza and leave without being harassed.

Okay, I just remembered how the conversation shifted last night.

I'd been telling TremensGirl about the crushes I'd suddenly developed on the girl at the island and the cute hippie girl at the bar. And the crush I'd had for a long time on the cute blonde bartender girl.

Those three girls all look very different from each other, and TremensGirl told me that I was weird. Then she was like, "Speaking of you being weird, LaptopGirl blah blah blah..."

Anyway, that's how that topic was broached. Now everyone can go on with their lives. You're welcome.

Got to Rich O's at 8:30 or so. I got to park in the actual Rich O's parking lot. So that was a good sign, but it was a misleading one.

The place was completely packed. With strangers. MusicalYuppieDude was sitting on the throne, I sat at the kiddie table. Neither of us recognized anyone in the place except for each other.

But, at least the strangers brought women with them. So the usual Saturday night sausage fest was cancelled.

My first attempt at a beer was something new to me.

New Holland Black Tulip

(draft) Pale amber, fizzy, good head. All standard for Belgians of this type. Aroma seemed a tad stale to me. Flavor was average but subdued. The finish was very reminiscent of rubbing alcohol. Bitter and drying. I was disappointed with this beer, and I didn't drink very much of it.

Let's see, there was a very pretty girl at the island. She reminded me a lot of LaptopGirl's friend WeatherGirl. She was sitting with a bunch of dorks and hippies though. And there was a very cute hippie girl at the bar with her boyfriend. When I started to explain to the bartender that I might finish the Black Tulip later, the cute hippie girl turned around and looked at me, and I totally forgot how to talk. It came out as something like, "I might sdflhgy sdwoq nnuue lllllllllllllllllllaaaa."

The bartender got the gist though. Then TremensGirl came in and I gave her the rest of the Black Tulip.

We just talked about various crap for a while. Like how I've never thought the simma down now skits on SNL are funny at all. At one point, I don't know how, the conversation shifted to that same old topic. And there were some pretty fucked-up opinions thrown my way. I was, as I said in my last entry, saved from getting all defensive and making as ass out of myself by the unexpected arrival of HatGirl and LuckyFucker.

HatGirl!

Yay!

So I moved up to the island (the strangers there had left) and talked with those two for an hour or so. It was nice.

Once HatGirl and LuckyFucker left, WomanRepellant came and joined me. I'd cut myself off after my second Gulden Draak so I just had a couple Diet Cokes while WomanRepellant and I talked about various crap.

I was going to stop at White Castle on the way home, but I forgot again.

I suppose that I was just - what's a good word? - flabbergasted by the opinion expressed to me tonight.

Not defensive, though it might have come to that before too long. Certainly not angry.

Flabbergasted.

I cannot think of any time in my life when I've been confronted with a more inaccurate series of statements.

Luckily, HatGirl came in and distracted me before I made a complete ass out of myself.

I'm in a much better mood this morning. I got to cross a person off my list. Yay!

People would probably look down on me if they knew just how much value I place in tiny little gestures. And, I know, it is sad that I pretty much base all of my happiness on such tiny things.

But, you know what's even sadder than that?

Basing my happiness on those things, and then they don't happen.

I don't want to go back to those days. It's a fairly constant fear of mine. And fear fuels the funk.

So I got to Rich O's at 8:30 or so, after a quick meal at the haunted Burger King. I should probably have gone to Wendy's or Arby's instead. The meal didn't sit right in my stomach, and that slight nausea only made my mood worse.

The place was packed, and loud. Too packed. Too loud. I wanted to turn around and leave, but for some stupid reason I didn't. I grabbed a Wostyntje (242) and sat on the sofa with MusicalYuppieDude and TremensGirl.

It was loud.

It was packed.

I should have left. I wanted to just get up and leave. I told myself that about every ten seconds.

But I didn't leave. I guess I still held out some hope that something would happen to renew my faith in humanity. If I could only hold out for just a little bit longer, then something would happen and I could go back to being happy.

I eventually moved to the throne, and I had a couple more glasses of Wostyntje (278).

My mood never got any better. Those poor souls around me, to their credit, did a fantastic job of resisting my attempts to suck all of the life out of the room.

I'm sure that everyone was very relieved when I finally left.

I know that I was.

It's a weird feeling. Happy and irritated at the same time.

Happy because, well, I'm still happy from what happened in May.

Pissed because...

I guess I'm irritated because, as a general rule, people suck.

Tonight, I emailed to RockGirl a list of people I'm irritated with. It was a long list. In fact, if you read this entry, and you wonder if you're on the list, then you probably are.

I'm both irritated and irritable. This is a bad combination for me. It basically means that everyone is fair game. It means that, if you haven't managed to piss me off yet, just wait a while and it's bound to happen before too long.

I've done some calculations. And my life is 142.6755 asstillion times better now that it was three months ago. I'm pretty sure that's all that's holding me together tonight. I can still look back at the fairly recent past, and I can appreciate the difference between then and now. It is, not literally but metaphorically, like the difference between night and day.

Anyway.

I was going to say that it wasn't anyone's fault that I'm so irritated. I was going to say that it was all my own doing. But I've thought about it, and I've decided not to say that. I've decided not to lie.

This mood was thrust upon me from external sources. One tiny little thing somehow joined forces with a thousand other tiny little things. And they created one great big giant thing, the sole purpose of which was to wipe the smile off my face.

Well, it worked. I'm frowning now.

But I'm still smiling on the inside.

So fuck you, giant thing.

You might have won this battle, but the war is mine.