(response to messages)

I can't believe you said that.

Yes, I said it. Yes, I dropped my pants a little.

Nobody was surprised that I felt it, just that I actually blurted it out.

I don't think I care. I'd been beating around the bush since April, and it just became pointless.

I really wanted to write something good tonight. To change the subject a little. But I've got nothing, so I'll just stand here with my pants down for a while longer.

This week the band picked the songs for each performer.

Jordis: Hauntingly good. I hope she loses so the band doesn't become an anchor for her. (90 points)

Jessica: Love the song. Love the voice. Wow, that was fucking awesome. (95 points)

Ty: He just didn't impress me this week. Not at all. (70 points)

Suzie: Decent, if passionless, performance. (80 points)

Marty: Poor Marty, having to sing a Britney Spears song. He did the best he could with it I suppose. (60 points)

Deanna: Tough song. Missed a couple of notes pretty badly. Just decent otherwise. (65 points)

JD: Seemed really constipated. It was a really unsettling performance to watch and listen to. (55 points)

Mig: Good song. The performance fluctuated quite a bit, but everyone else seemed to like it. (75 points)

Slept all night last night, so I'm caught up for the first time in a long time. Odd to actually be alert in the morning.

Today I'm having a bunch of dirt delivered so I can try to do something about this damn hole in my back yard. This thing has so far eluded every attempt to fill it. It's becoming hourglassed so filling it isn't as easy as just dumping dirt in. If I knew for sure just how deep this old cistern was I'd be tempted to just drive my truck over the area a few times to cave it in. I guess it's good that I don't drink at home.

Wow, this was an exciting entry.

Maybe I'll spice it up a bit...with pictures!!!

This is the hole. Doesn't look like much but it opens up very quickly and may go all the way to Hell.

Here's the dirt I bought to hopefully fill the hole. I half-expect that I'll be ordering more dirt.

Something has happened.

I'm not really sure why it happened, but I do know when. It happened yesterday evening while I was at Rich O's listening to yet another asshole badmouth someone who wasn't there to defend herself.

Instead of becoming angry, as I have recently, this time I just listened. A bunch of shitheads that I hardly know at all making fun of someone who's more wonderful than all of them put together.

How, I found myself wondering, could the entire world be so wrong about her? How come I, and a few of our mutual friends, are the only ones able to see beyond the actions of the past, beyond the quirky and misunderstood exterior, and see what's really there, what's really important?

So I was thinking about how wrong the world was, and something happened.

Something inside me shifted gears. Something inside me switched itself off. Something inside me fell out of love and went back to simply missing a friend.

I know, and anyone who's read anything here in the past year knows, that my moods are ever-changing. Nothing lasts forever, and in my case, nothing seems to last for more than a few days at the most. I expect my mood to change again before too much time has passed.

But for now, but for now at least, I'm a normal person. No longer a person that fears that he's met, and lost, the love of his life. Just a person that's lost a friend.

Every feeling I've tried so hard to suppress is dormant. All that remains is kindness. Affection. Fondness. That annoying habit I'd developed of objectifying her? Gone. Those countless hours spent agonizing over past indecision? No longer needed. The drifting I've been doing for weeks? I'm grounded now.

I'm just a guy that misses his friend, and nothing more. All is as it should be.

At least for now. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?

I guess I've given up on sleep for the night.

I developed a bit of a fever this evening. I hope I didn't catch it (or give it to) my grandmother while I was at her house setting up this 1960s technology medical alarm doohickey.

So anyway, I got this fever, and I laid down at about 7:00. For the night, I thought.

Wrong.

I woke up a little while ago and, though I'm still feverish, sleep is beyond me.

What woke me up was dreaming about this one part of this one night last Summer. One night a week before the first part of this entry happened.

That night, my dear readers, was what you call a golden opportunity.

A golden opportunity to be like every other guy on the planet. A golden opportunity to jump in, dick first, without a care in the world for what would happen later.

After all, what could be better? She'd just broken up with her boyfriend in front of my eyes. We'd both been drinking. There was nobody else around. I had, for a while at least, her undivided attention. We even hugged each other goodnight, first time that had happened. It wouldn't have taken much to press things further. To see where they might lead.

Yep, a golden opportunity. A wasted one.

I did nothing.

For you see, I'm not the type of guy that's going to make a move on someone that's been single for less than two hours. I'm not the type of guy that's going to hit on a girl that's been drinking heavily. And I'm most definitely not the type of guy that's going to try anything with a friend of mine unless I know damn well that's what she's wanting me to do.

I hardly ever think about that night. I have plenty of other moments, much more dramatic, seemingly much more pivotal, to occupy my mind. I don't think I've really thought about that particular night in months. But I'm thinking about it right now, and I'm thinking, once again, that I'm a dumbass.

Everything hinged on that night, on those two seconds when we pulled away from our brief embrace. Nothing that's happened since then would have been the same, if only I'd been like every other guy on the planet. If I'd just leaned back in. Put my hand aside her face. Pulled her to me. Tasted her lips. Things may not have turned out well - they probably wouldn't have - but I'd fucking know. I'd know and I wouldn't still be guessing a year later.

Every once in a while, something happens, or doesn't happen. Something that's important. A brief period that doesn't seem like much at the time but turns out to be one of the most important moments in a person's life.

I could have tried, failed, and then moved on.

I could have tried, and succeeded, only to have things fall apart later, and then moved on.

I could have tried, and succeeded, and been deliriously happy for the rest of my life.

These were some of the the paths that lay in front of me on that night last Summer. I chose instead to do nothing. To just stand there. A part of me is still standing there I suppose. Wondering.

Went and ate a very good steak dinner with MixedSignalGirl last night. I know, this was probably a bad idea. I think she figured that out as well because she bailed after we'd eaten and I'd assured her that nothing I've been writing about lately (the bullshit last week) had anything to do with her.

To drink with dinner I had myself a Guinness (736). For some reason the Guinnii at Tucker's taste better than the ones at Rich O's. I think it has something to do with the temperature, but I'm not really sure.

So next I went over to Rich O's. The parking lot was jammed but I guess everyone must have been on the Sportstime side because Rich O's itself was only about 1/3 full. I sat on the sofa with the beautiful HatGirl and ordered my first beer.

Rogue Chipotle Ale (22)

(bottle) Very faint peppery aroma, with a little smoke thrown in. Not much taste until the finish, then a little pepper heat. I was expecting more pepper, so I was expecting to dislike this more than I did.

I was really having a hard time keeping from jumping into HatGirl's eyes and swimming around, but after a while this dude showed up and sat with us and HatGirl left pretty much immediately. Just a coincidence I'm sure. Not.

OldBob joined us then and we both tried this Jenlain beer.

Jenlain Farmhouse Ale (10)

(draft) Orange. Some faint apple flavor, but even more apricots. A little too sweet and citrusy for my tastes.

The rest of the night was pretty dull. The place was even more of a sausage festival than it normally is, thanks I suppose to WomanRepellant, who sat and talked with me about this one fucker that we both hate.

Got home a little after 11:00 and finished watching Last of the Mohicans.

I want to write something, but I think I should wait a little while. I should wait until this nagging little something rattling around in my head slows down enough for me to recognize it for what it is. Anything I write now will be just a guess.

But I want to write something, so I'm going to, dammit.

The other night, after the fucked up shit happened, I reacted pretty much as I expected. I then laid awake all night, all tensed up, waiting for it to happen again. Hoping it would happen again, at least on some layer. I mean, on a conscious level I wanted it to stop, but some small part of me was actually excited over the prospect.

I'm not completely sure which part of me that was.

Was it a part of me that stands over whatever small spark of hope for the future I still harbor? Perhaps it was a part of me that still clings to the idea that this can all be fixed somehow, that given the proper opportunity, I can still make everything okay. Maybe even better than okay. Maybe even great.

Any of these things would be understandable, certainly. Even expected, as long as you're looking at me from the outside. Through this 'blog perhaps.

From in here though, from here inside my head, I know that it was none of those things. Those parts of me are gone. Perhaps comatose, perhaps dead. Maybe they've just gone off to Tahiti and are getting plastered with Koko. I dunno, but wherever they are, they're not in my head now, and they weren't in my head the other night either.

So what was it? What was it that dared to hope for the bullshit to continue while the rest of me screamed for it to end?

Perhaps, and I hope that this is correct, there's just a part of me that's become so bored with drifting about that it'll welcome any stimulation whatsoever. That would at least make some sense, right? I can deal with that, if that's all it is.

But I don't think so.

I think, I'm afraid, I really hope I'm wrong, but maybe that small part of me hoped for another chance to...

I'm having a hard time thinking of words here.

The other night I didn't react in the most mature manner. I reflexively did what I felt needed to be done, but I don't think I did it for the right reasons. I did it for me, to ease my own discomfort.

Since when did I become important? I'm not the victim here, and I never have been.

By reacting the way I did, I put myself first. I gave no thought to what effect it might have on anyone else. I saw a hand timidly reaching out to me, and I slapped it away.

This bothers me a lot, that I'm capable of doing this. What bothers me even more is the possibility that the small part of me, the one that hoped for more bullshit the other night, that this part of me wanted to cause more pain. To be in control of the situation. To dish it out for once.

To get a little bit of revenge.

I've known for a long time that I'd come out of all this as a different person. I hope the person I become is not this shallow self-centered prick I fear is sitting inside me now. Waiting, hoping even, for a chance to lash out...

Man, even thinking about this is upsetting me. I don't want to be this person. I hope I'm not this person.

I really should have waited a while before I wrote this entry.

Last night I went to the Cumberland Brewpub in Louisville and met up with RealTrainGirl and GreenBeerDude.

This was my first time going to this place, despite (a)It being a brewpub and (b)It being only about 30 minutes from my house. The first thing about the place is that it's very hard to find a parking place. Luckily it wasn't raining. The second thing about the place is that there were a lot of pretty girls there.

These aren't particularly good or even interesting pictures, but they're all I've got:

I arrived before my friends and ordered some food and my first beer. I ended up drinking two of these:

Cumberland Nitro Porter (40)

(draft) Took a long time to pour, but worth the wait. Very smooth. Nice chocolate aroma and flavor that reminded me of Young's Double Chocolate Stout. This is a very good beer. Yummy.

After a while we went to the upstairs (which I didn't even know existed) and I had a small glass of the only other beer that seemed interesting to me.

Cumberland Nut Brown Ale (10)

(draft) Another winner from this small brewpub. Quite malty and nutty, but enough hops to keep it nicely balanced.

Then we all went to Rich O's. I'd been wanting to try this Rogue beer, but by the time I got there I decided that it was too late to be cranking open a 22-oz. bottle, so I just asked the bartender to set one aside for me to drink Saturday night. I just had some Diet Cokes.

We sat around at the island. NotGeorge joined us and then, lo and behold, MisunderstoodGirl came in! Very cool to see her after what seemed like forever. RealTrainGirl gave me shit for not talking up a storm, but really I was just basking in the glory that is MisunderstoodGirl. Words were unnecessary.

After the girls (ha ha again) left NotGeorge and I talked for a while, then I came home and shot some pool until the Sun came up.

Ask me a question, and I'll try to answer it.

I need some ideas for an entry.