I always wanted us to go, but she kept putting it off. "One of these days," she'd always say. She was never much of an outdoorsy person.

Well, today I realized that there was no point in waiting for that magical day any longer. We weren't going to be going anywhere anymore.

So I went to the damn place by myself.

Going with a broken toe? Maybe not so brilliant. But I had a fucking point to make.

Since I'd never been there before, I just parked at the first parking lot I saw. How was I supposed to know that there was a real visitor area just down the road? Anyway, here's the view from where I parked.

For some reason when I got here I had to pee.

Looking up at the old bridge. I think they're talking about making this a pedestrian walkway, but it may be a completly different bridge for all I know.

My cellphone camera couldn't handle the contrast apparently.

I was surprised, for some reason, to see sand on the river's bank.

Waaaay over there is Kentucky.

At one point I found that I'd left the beaten path, so I beat my own.

These rocks were pretty cool. I wish my toe had allowed pain-free jumping around on them.

Just a bunch of logs that the river has deposited over the years.

The tree was pretty much growing out of solid rock.

A view back toward the bridge from the real visitor center.

---

After I left the park, I went over to The Pub and had a Newcastle (1704) and then a Young's Double Chocolate Stout (243) with my lunch.

That Young's is a beautiful beer in draft form. Yummy.

Wait for something long enough, and eventually it just might happen.

Just wanted to say that.

I ended up getting to Rich O's about an hour earlier than I wanted to last night. RealTrainGirl called and made it sound like they were suffering greatly without my presence, so I dropped my grandiose Red Lobster plans and settled for Arby's, then got to Rich O's just after 8:00.

I don't know what the big deal was about getting me there so damn quickly. RealTrainGirl and GreenBeerDude were sitting at the island with about 8 million other people. I said hello and then sat at the bar and talked to a beautiful girl that I hadn't seen in months. Once she went back to join her group I talked with BamaCouple for a bit. My first beer was this:

Founders Black Rye (12)

(bottle) You know, I wasn't really expecting to like this. Most ryes are just too strange for me. But this one was actually pretty decent. There was nothing notable about it though, so I probably won't bother to have it again.

So RealTrainGirl started giving me shit because I hadn't squeezed myself in with the 8 million people at the island. Man I really felt like I was being pulled in three different directions. BamaCouple were trying to talk to me. The beautiful girl had asked me to join her group in the living room area. RealTrainGirl was trying to get me to move to the island.

Actually, I felt like leaving. The place was just too damn demanding. I hadn't even been there five minutes and I was already exhausted. Plus my toe was hurting.

Anyway, what I ended up doing, once the 8 million people had dispersed, was go sit at the island and try to fit into the conversations they were having while at the same time sneaking looks at the living room area. It was too crowded over there as well. Not really, but I was feeling pretty claustrophobic.

My next beer was a Young's Double Chocolate Stout (223).

My friends at the island were carrying on and on about some gay bar that they wanted to go to. I didn't want to go. I wanted to stay at Rich O's and look at the beautiful girl some more. So, to make a long story short, RealTrainGirl pissed me off my harping about it for an hour until a place finally opened up in the living room area so I moved over there away from the nagging and bitching and gay jokes. I can be pretty stubborn at times. Or maybe all the time.

Another thing about last night - there were several very hot girls at Rich O's - not just the ones I've already mentioned. There's this Russian dude that plays "music" out front sometimes. He was there last night, and I might have to give him some of the credit for the unusually feminine crowd. Way to go, RussianDude!

So, I was sitting on the throne. The beautiful girl was next to me but on the sofa, and SpikeBoy was next to me but on the loveseat. I tried to maintain a nice balance between the two, not so much because I gave a shit about SpikeBoy's feelings (he was busily trying to hit on this chick at the kiddie table) but because the beautiful girl had her boyfriend sitting right there and so I didn't want my fascination to be too obvious.

For my next beer, I went with something new again. Something that CoffeeDude had recommended:

Sinebrychoff Koff Porter (12)

(bottle) Highly recommended to me by a coffee lover, so I was expecting coffee flavor in the beer. This instead has a good chocolate base to the flavor. A little extra bite at the end, because of the 7.2 ABV, that I could have done without. Good though.

At one point, the place cleared out. I mean cleared out. It was like a fire drill or something. Maybe SpikeBoy farted, I thought. Or maybe WomanRepellant had come in. Nope, everybody just felt the urge to leave at the same time.

So SpikeBoy and I were joined by CoffeeDude (wearing a stupid Halloween hat) and that was the end of the night's excitement. I did have a half-glass of Ettaler Kloster Dunkel (30) at the end though. Then I got some White Castles and came home.

Yes, you.

It was wonderful to finally see you again.

It would have been even more wonderful if I'd actually been able to talk to you without you-know-who hanging on and scrutinizing every word we said to each other.

Maybe next time it'll be just the two of us?

I'd like that.

A lot.

First of all, before I could do anything last night, I had to do something about my toe situation.

After briefly thinking about wearing sandals, and briefly thinking about cutting the siding off an old pair of sneakers, and very briefly thinking about just staying home, what I ended up doing was this:

I took my oldest pair of sneakers and hacked away at the insides of the right shoe with a pair of sharp scissors to remove the padding around where my pinkie toe would be. I then unwrapped said pinkie toe and rewrapped it with about one-fourth the amount of tape that had been there.

After all that, my foot actually fit in the shoe, and while it was a little painful, I felt I was ready to take on the world. Or at least Rich O's.

I got there a little before 9:00 and sat at the bar. I've written before I think about sitting at the bar. I have to be in a certain mood to be able to do it comfortably. Last night I was in one of those moods, so I just sat and let my imagination take me back to happier times.

All of the beers I had last night were new to me. This was the first one:

Ettaler Kloster Dunkel (20)

(draft) Not what I was expecting, but a pleasant surprise instead. The main flavor I got was caramel, but there was really an awful lot of complexity behind that. Everything was subdued, but noticeable. Pretty good.

The crowd, when I bothered to turn around and check it out, consisted of mostly PBDs. A couple people that I know fairly well were scattered around and among people that I don't care to know at all.

My next beer was this:

De Dolle Stille Nacht (Silent Night) (12)

(bottle) Poured an orange/red color, without the massive head I usually find in De Dolle beers. Aroma much more massive and much more complex than their other offerings. Along with the standard Belgian apple tones, I also got what I'll call cherries and apricots. Did not taste like it had 12% alcohol in it.

So I stayed put until only CoffeeDude was left in the living room area. I grabbed my shit and moved over to the sofa. CoffeeDude was in a nosey mood apparently so I spent most of the night talking about my newly-regained sanity and shit like that.

My third beer was this:

Anchor Porter (12)

(bottle) Didn't get much of a head with this one. Strong roasted malt aroma. Flavor was biased a little more towards coffee than chocolate, but malty sweetness was the primary flavor. Pretty good, but not great.

And that was it. I came home a little proud of myself for not getting depressed.

Here's a fun little experiment that you can do at home.

What you'll need:

• Two people besides yourself


• A shovel


• Some rope

Now take the shovel and whack one of the people in the head with it.

Done? Okay.

Now, spend some time talking to the person that you didn't hit with the shovel. Try to explain to him just how much it hurts to be whacked in the head. Use the unconscious body of the whacking victim as a visual aid perhaps. Be sure to point out all the blood. Explain how shocking, how intense the pain is. Talk about how pissed off being whacked makes you, and how sad and betrayed you feel.

Note that your non-victim will try to understand the kind of pain that you're talking about, but for the most part he's just taking your word for it. A part of him probably thinks you're exaggerating a little. He'll get it, but only at the most basic level. He cannot fully understand, because he hasn't gone through it. His imagination can only take him so far.

Now wait for your whacking victim to regain consciousness. You may want to tie him up first, for your own protection, so use the rope. You remembered the rope, right?

Once the whackee is awake, talk to him about the pain and the sadness and the feeling of betrayal.

Note that you hardly have to say a word. He simply understands, because he's experienced it all. He knows all about the pain, the betrayal, the need for revenge, the desire to curl up and die, or at least heal a little. He knows it because he's living it.

---

I wonder, if Annie Sullivan hadn't been nearly blind as a child - would she have been able to understand Helen Keller's disabilities enough to help her the way she did? Or would she have simply pitied her?

Tonight, I thought about her. I talked about her. I talked about her some more. I talked about missing her. I talked about how she sparkled. I talked about how I'm concerned about what might happen the next time I see her.

I talked about a lot of things.

Yet I never, not even for a second, got sad.

That's got to be worth something, right?

Right?

I imagine that a lot of people, even those who won't admit to it, have seen the movie Shallow Hal starring Jack Black.

For those of you that haven't seen it, or who have repressed the memory of it for some reason, here's a summary from imdb.com:

Following the advice of his dying father, Hal dates only women who are physically beautiful. One day, however, he runs into self-help guru Tony Robbins, who hypnotizes him into recognizing only the inner beauty of women. Hal thereafter meets Rosemary, a grossly obese woman whom only he can see as a vision of loveliness. But will their relationship survive when Hal's equally shallow friend undoes the hypnosis?

I watched this movie, for the second or third time I guess, last night.

I suppose that, like most people, I'm a lot like Hal. The first thing I see in another person is their physical appearance. At that point, there's usually either attraction or there's not.

I also suppose that, like most people, I wish I could look beyond the physical and see the person within. This can happen, and has happened, but only after I've spent enough time with the person to get to know them better. This makes me shallow, and I know it. I don't like it very much, but there it is anyway. I don't even want to think about how many wonderful people have been absent from my life simply because I wasn't initially attracted to them.

I used to think that Hal was given the perfect gift. The ability to see only the inner beauty (or lack thereof) in a woman from the very beginning.

There was a time when I thought I'd been blessed with that gift.

I looked at her and, though she was quite beautiful, I hardly even noticed that. What I did notice was that she sparkled. Call it inner beauty, call it her soul, or her aura, call it whatever you wish. She was the most beautiful person I'd ever seen. And she could have had the face of a troll - my assessment would not have changed one bit.

Was this love at first sight? I didn't think so at the time. But I'd never experienced anything like it before, so what did I know? Whatever it was, it was important. She was important.

Those of you who've been reading carefully know that this, this so-called gift wasn't, in the end, a gift at all. It was a curse. For meeting her was like having my picture taken with a very bright flash. Her light seared into my flesh, into my heart, and even though the source of that light is long gone, I've been partially blind ever since.

Afterimages of her float through my consciousness, and at times I cannot see anything except the memory of her beauty.

Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever be able to see anything clearly again.

Sometime I wonder if I would even want to.

Several years ago, one of my cousins missed three days of work because he threw out his back.

I'm pretty sure he told the people he worked with that he'd injured himself doing something manly. Bullriding, perhaps. Or maybe anvil juggling.

Not the truth, though. Certainly not the truth, that he'd taken a mighty swing while playing wiffleball and that's how he'd hurt his back.

He'd have never lived that down.

At least his injury was a real one. Back problems can be truly incapacitating, as my cousin has pointed out to us at every opportunity for the past several years.

Nobody's going to make fun of you for having an injured back. So, as long as you have a good story about how you got injured, you're safe from teasing.

Not quite the same situation as the one I'm in.

My injury is quite possibly the most pathetic one possible.

I bwoke my widdlest piggy.

It's amazing how such a tiny appendage can cause so much pain. Why do we even need our pinkie toes? I think that, if the doctor had offered, I'd have allowed him to snip the thing off yesterday.

So I'm working from home today. I'm doing this because my toe is taped up and I cannot put a shoe on over it. Actually, maybe I could, but it would hurt. A lot. So I'm not going to chance it.

This is the most pansified reason for staying home that I've ever heard of.

I wonder, if someone reads something here that they've already read, are they disappointed? Suppose I mention something in a personal e-mail, then I make an entry about it. Does the e-mail recipient yawn because they've read it before, or, like someone working backstage at the theater, can they still manage to enjoy the show even though they know what's coming?

My first real bout with insomnia came when I split from my ex-wife for the first time. It seemed like I'd go days at a time without sleep. Eventually, I could find no solution except the one that so many others in my position had already made a cliché - I drank until I passed out.

Well that got old very quickly. It also got expensive. So I stopped doing that. Fuck, it was almost 20 years ago.

These days, when the sandman is late for his visit, I don't drink. I imagine.

I run through scenarios in my head, so I won't be taken completely by surprise. I have conversations with people that aren't there, so everything is nice and rehearsed in case they ever are there.

This is my version of counting sheep.

Even when my mind won't let me imagine anything except the terrible, I still find some comfort, some relaxation, in playing these little scenes and conversations out in my head.

Lately, it's almost always the same thing, this little playlet that I run through my mind late at night. I'm not going to describe it because I want my e-mail recipient to remain privy to some things that only belong to us. I will say though that it's a happy, yet poignant, little scene, and one that's becoming increasingly less-likely.

Like I said, it's almost always the same thing. Almost always.

Last night it was something different. Last night I welcomed a new costar into my nightly drama. And the two of us acted out what's probably the most unlikely scene I've ever imagined.

And I went to sleep right away. I wonder what that means?

The potential problem with running these scenarios through your head is trying to keep from being disappointed when they don't come true. The one I thought about last night has a shelf-life of three days. So, by Sunday night, I'll have to be ready to accept that it's not really going to happen.

And then I'll have to find more sheep to count. Probably the same old sheep. I've gotten used to them. They're like pets.

And this metaphor is breaking down very quickly, so I'm going to stop typing now.