Earlier I was irritated, but now I'm pissed.

Why am I pissed?

It's simple.

I'm pissed about being pissed at myself over my expected reaction to something that isn't going to happen anyway on a day that shouldn't mean a thing to me regarding a girl that shouldn't mean a thing to me.

I'm pre-pissed.

I'm irritated now, but I don't know why. Maybe I just needed a longer nap.

Tomorrow is Friday for us, so that's good, but tomorrow night is also when my stress will peak, or if not then, Friday night. If I make it past Friday night, I should be okay for a while. Like a week maybe, but by then I'll be in Las Vegas.

Monday after work I met up with RealTrainGirl and GreenBeerDude. I had myself a half-glass of Bell's Kalamazoo Stout (155) and then a half-glass of this stuff:

Belhaven Wee Heavy (10)

(draft) This was decent, but there was just something strange about it. Some fruity characteristic that I couldn't identify. There was also a bitterness that came out of nowhere at the finish.

I should probably be more willing to open up to the people that offer to help me. I guess I just don't feel like explaining everything all over again.

I should write something better than this. I hate it when a crappy entry is the first thing people see.

Happy Birthday to my sister Dina!

Sometime, in the next few days, I've got a decision to make.

Nothing Earth-shattering, except to me. It's just one of those things that, if I choose one way, I'll probably regret it for a very long time. But if, on the other hand, I chose the other way, I'll probably regret it for a very long time.

Hence my dilemma.

Of course, I could get lucky. I could die sometime in the next couple of days, thus sparing myself the burden of this impossible decision.

Yes, I'm kidding about the dying part.

A little bit anyway.

This fucking deadline is fast approaching, and yet I continue to procrastinate. This is not the way I used to be. Not the way I want to be. I want to be able to, simply and calmly, weigh the pros and cons of each choice, and then make a choice. Belly up. Be a man. Even if it's nothing more than the proverbial lesser of two evils, it's at least a choice that I make. Even if I choose incorrectly, at least it's an actual decision instead of another fucking cop-out.

This should not be that difficult. Chances are that nobody but me would ever even notice which choice I ended up making. So then why is it so damn hard to fucking decide?

Man, I'm saying fucking a lot in this entry. Hi, Grandma!

Seriously, wtf?

I was thinking today about eyes.

I love eyes. I love how they're the window to the soul.

There's just something primal about looking into the eyes of another living being.

Look a wild animal in the eyes, and it will either run away, or it will attack.

Look a child in the eyes, and some of their innocence and enthusiasm crosses over to you.

Look into the eyes of the one you love, but use caution, because you may not like what you see. Sometimes, that affection that you see, it's nothing more than your own feelings, being reflected back at you. Sometimes those feelings you glimpse are nothing more than pity or concern or even fear, twisted into something that's not really there, an illusion born of your own desperation. Sometimes, though they seem to be looking at you, their eyes are in fact focused a million miles away.

But every now and then...

If you're lucky...

Sometimes you meet the gaze of the one you love and what you see in their eyes, it combines with what they see in your eyes. It multiplies. Like feedback from a microphone placed to close to a speaker, it quickly overwhelms you with its intensity. You each feed off the emotions of the other, and for every moment that your eyes are locked together, your bond becomes stronger. You get lost, but it's okay because there's someone there with you, sharing it all with you. You're where you want to be. In their eyes. You never want to leave.

I love eyes. I love how they're the window to the soul.

All of the times I think about her, I think about holding her hand more often than I think about anything else. It was like we were separate, but when we held hands some circuit was completed and the energy within each of us became our energy instead. There's just something sweet about holding hands.

As a child, we hold our parents' hands, and it makes us feel safe and loved.

As we get a little older and enter grade school, holding hands is that first timid step towards romance, even when we're too young to know what romance is, and would be grossed out if we ever discovered the disgusting truth about what hand holding can lead to.

Older still, and hand holding is often replaced with making out, sex, and all of the other "adult" activities. Holding someone's hand seems to become a burden, an intrusion into our personal space. Besides, it's what kids do.

Then, at the end of our lives, if we're lucky, we find ourselves sitting on a porch with some special person who's shared their life with us, holding hands. It makes us feel safe and loved.

We spend our entire lives reaching out. Every now and then two people will reach out at the same time, and their hands will find each other.

When I think about her, I miss just about everything. But holding her hand, I miss that most of all.

Walking into Rich O's last night, I did my normal survey.

Hot girls in the front area? Check, check, check, check.

Hot girl on the sofa? Check.

Hot girls at the island? Check and check.

Hot girl on the loveseat? Check

Wait a minute.

Where the fuck was I? This couldn't be Rich O's. Doesn't Roger have some kind of rule about hot girls? Oh, I guess it is Rich O's, because there's SuperShitHead being all supershitheady over at the stand-up bar.

I thought for a second about grabbing the throne, but the hot girls in that area were with guys, so I sat at the bar and turned sideways so I had a view of the whole room. I had myself a Bell's Kalamazoo Stout (125).

There was this very LOUD 200-year-old man at the bar, and I almost immediately regretted my seating choice. I was contemplating the throne again when SpikeBoy came in and grabbed the seat next to me.

I showed him my rock, and we talked about what a douchebag SuperShitHead was, and we went ahead and divvied up the hot girls in the place. I got dibs on the brunettes and SpikeBoy got everyone else.

I'd just finished striking up a cooperative wingman deal with SpikeBoy. He could have first shot at every girl that ever came in except for two. First was LaptopGirl, and second was HatGirl. This struck SpikeBoy as a perfectly fine arrangement because like he'd ever have a chance with either of those girls anyway. In return for my generosity, SpikeBoy agreed to immediately call me if either of those two girls ever stepped foot in Rich O's again.

Eventually the couple on the sofa got up and left, so we grabbed our shit and moved over there. I sat on the sofa and looked across the coffee table into the eyes of... HatGirl.

She'd been sitting there the whole time, I'd checked her off when I first came in and did my site survey, but I hadn't recognized her without her hat. This isn't the first time this has happened either.

Of course she was with her boyfriend, who I like to call LuckyFucker. Doesn't seem like a bad guy actually. I ended up talking with him and HatGirl for the rest of the night.

I showed her my rock.

After a bit, I moved to the throne because (a) the couch is in really bad shape and (b) having HatGirl directly in front of me was a little disconcerting.

I had another Bell's Kalamazoo Stout (145).

Eventually HatGirl and LuckyFucker went home. SpikeBoy had already left, so I was left alone again. I had a half-pint of Guinness (954) and left at about 10:30.

This proved to be a bad time to leave, because VigilanteGirl was still working at Gas-N-Stuff. She grouchily denied being grouchy lately. And grouchily accused me of being grouchy.

Whatever. Grouch.

The other day I crossed a line.

Actually I crossed it, and then hung out on the other side for a while, then finally realized where I was and jumped back to the other side.

That there is called a metaphor. I use them a lot. Some of my readers don't seem to get the concept. Perhaps they should find a less challenging 'blog to read.

The truth is - there was no actual line. What actually happened is that I went from whining about certain things to whining about certain other things, and the latter things were things that I'd never whined about before. They were things that no halfway self-respecting person would ever whine about in public.

I whined about them. In public. In this 'blog. So, in metaphorical terms, I crossed the line.

The pansy line.

What happened was, I was writing about how I was irritated with certain things, and the next thing I knew, I was actually listing those things. This was wrong. I should not have done this. For those of you that saw me, standing there like a dork on the other side of the line, and for those of you that felt uncomfortable seeing me there, wondering if I was there because of you, I apologize.

So my hiatus ended about a day earlier I'd thought it would. I'd expected to last until Sunday morning, but before I'd even fully awakened on Saturday I found myself typing away.

This was nothing, this little break I took. But a few people noticed that I was gone. For those of you that offered your help, thank you. For those of you that didn't seem able to deal with my silence, get a life. And for those of you that took the opportunity to chastise and belittle me for showing an actual human side of my personality, fuck off and die slowly and painfully.

I almost didn't go out last night. Not because I didn't feel like going out, but because I took a nap after work and didn't wake up until almost 9:00. Much later and I'd probably just have stayed home.

But I really did want to go out. I wanted to take my rock to Rich O's. So that's what I did.

The front area was very crowded. It was full of sk8tr bois and other assorted idiots. This did not bode well for what Rich O's proper would be like, so I was pleasantly surprised to see the entire living room area open.

I sat at the throne and ordered a Great Lakes Christmas Ale (120). I'd only had about two sips of the beer when DeadLady and her son/boyfriend came in and sat on the loveseat. So I grabbed my shit and moved over to the island.

After a while, WomanRepellant came in and joined me. We bullshitted for a while. I had a Corsendonk Christmas Ale (50) which was quite yummy and WomanRepellant and I made fun of all of the strangers that had suddenly taken over the living room area. I'm glad I'd moved when I did.

At one point Bubbles came in so I went over and showed her my rock.

Yes, the night really was as boring as I'm making it out to be.

Contemplating what my last beer would be, I told the bartender that I wished that the Bell's Kalamazoo Stout was on tap. He pointed out that it was indeed back. Yay!

So I had a half-pint of the Bell's Kalamazoo Stout (105). Yummy.

That was it for me. That Corsendonk is like a time bomb or something, so I got out of there before it went off. I stopped at this little bar on the way home, hoping to talk with VigilanteGirl, but she was busy with some trivia game, so I just listened to some karaoke and had a Diet Coke, then I came home.