Just some stuff about my day. I'm killing time until Lost gets tivoed enough that I can watch it and skip all the commercials.

By the way, if you're not watching Lost, then you're missing out on a great show.

Scratch that - if you're not watching Lost then you suck.

Anyway, today for work we had to do some bullshit.

I've often said that while I don't consider myself especially smart, I do think that a lot of other people are idiots.

After today, I see no reason to revise that assertion.

One good thing about work today was that I got to have a Newcastle Brown Ale during lunch. Yummy and anyone *cough* Roger *cough* that thinks otherwise is obviously so far up the ladder of beer snobbery that there is little hope for common ground between us.

After work I went to Rich O's and had one of the last NABC Noble Smokers, maybe forever. No, I haven't sworn off beer, it's just that they're on their last keg and I remain pessimistic about this fine smoked beer ever coming back.

As I was getting ready to leave Rich O's I saw, lo and behold, that RealTrainGirl and MisunderstoodGirl had come in with GreenBeerDude. I had myself a Diet Coke and did some catching up. The girls are having a party the day after I return from Las Vegas (but that's not the reason, silly) so I'll need to stretch my good-mood goal out one extra day to the 21st.

I think I can do it.

Got home and checked out my new garage door opener. No more hernias for me from opening the door on my detached garage. Yay!

I guess that's it.

My horoscope for this week from Free Will Astrology:

After rejecting proposals from many directors, Bob Dylan has finally authorized Oscar-nominated Todd Haynes to make a film about his life. Seven different actors will portray Dylan, including a black woman. "I am setting out to explode the idea that anybody can be depicted in a single self," Haynes told The Sunday Times. You already explode that idea every week of your life, Pisces, and you will be exploding it with even greater force and style in the coming days. I encourage you to be proud of your own riotous multiplicity. It's something to be celebrated, not to be shy about. Why not fantasize about the seven actors and actresses you'd choose to play you in the movie about your life?

But I thought that it might actually be fun to pick seven people to play me when I become so famous that they make a movie about my life. Here are my picks:

Keifer Sutherland
Waaaaay too cool for the majority of my life, but Keifer could play me during some of the highlights and lowlights. He's a fantastic actor, and those talents would be needed to accurately portray the more dramatic events of my life.

John Cusack
Another guy that's too cool to play me, but the difference isn't quite so extreme as it would be with Keifer.

Jason Alexander
Everybody has some George Costanza in them, and I've certainly got my share. Jason could play the everyday me and he'd probably nail the performance.

Kevin Smith
Who the hell is Kevin Smith, you ask. He's the guy that plays Silent Bob, most notably in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. Any movie about me simply must have a quiet character.

Hume Cronin
Hume was just a very cool old man, and I hope that by the time my movie is made they'll have figured out a way to bring him back to life.

Julia Roberts
The horoscope suggested that I pick actors and actresses and Julia is the first actress that came to mind. I like the way she plays the fish out of water characters and I've certainly felt that way several times in my life.

Richard Gere
Hey! What's so damn funny? I put him on the list because he often portrays the romantic types, and that's what I've turned into.

Portraying other characters in my movie, and I only list the performers here so as not to insult or swell the egos of those in my life, would be:

Clint Eastwood, Marilyn Monroe, Lucy Liu, Patricia Arquette, Rosie O'Donnell, Julia Roberts (again), Britany Spears (sorry), Betty White, Dean Martin, Wilford Brimley, and Marissa Tomei in a blonde wig.

Well I've managed to be in a good mood for several days in a row now.

This doesn't really make any sense to me, but I'm not going to argue with it too much. Because although my mood has proven itself to be remarkably resilient in the past, it has also proven itself to be incredibly, astoundingly, fickle.

A week ago I was very sad. Now I'm not sad at all. What's happened in the meantime? Not a damn thing. Sure, they say time heals all wounds, but a fucking week, after six months of torment? In six months I showed zero real progress and now suddenly I feel fine? Doesn't make much sense to me, but I'll take it.

Maybe I'm just bottling things up inside me. But I don't feel like I am. Perhaps my heart has finally, mercifully, given up. But that doesn't feel right either. Let's face it, if I knew how to turn my frown upside-down I'd have done it a long time ago.

What I'd like to do is maintain this mood at least until I get back from Las Vegas. It's a pretty tall order, especially considering my current situation, but I feel fairly confident that with the proper amounts of alcohol, caffeine, and nicotine I can manage to keep the proper chemical balance in my head to actually enjoy my trip.

Got a call from the mechanic about my Monte Carlo today.

So far, they've determined that:

• I need a new battery (no surprise there)
• The gas in the car went bad over the Winter.
• The carburator is probably fucked up because of the bad gas.
• There is a mouse nest in the insulation on the hood.
• A part of the exhaust system is getting red hot, probably due to a blockage.
• This same blockage is probably what caused the split I mentioned before.
• The aforementioned mice have chewed several wires.

So far I know I'll be paying $70 for a new battery. After that it gets a little muddy.

If my entire exhaust system needs to be replaced I'm looking at about $1000.

The carburator work is mostly labor and is estimated at $200 to rebuild, or maybe $400 to replace.

For the wiring, he can't really give me an estimate until he surveys the damage done.

Then there's draining the fuel system to get rid of all the bad gas, and there's also the regular tune-up stuff I want done.

I'm starting to think that my initial $2000 estimate is going to be pretty close.

This of course sucks, but it sucks even more right now because I've got two bills I'd really been planning to use my tax refund to catch up on, and my property taxes are due on May 10th.

I need to figure out a way to keep the damn mice out of that car during the Winters. I've thought about installing a cat door but then I imagine I'd have all sorts of woodland creatures in there. Creatures even more destructive than mice.

I miss the days when I was rich.

Above is a picture of my childhood neighborhood. The buildings on the right are where my car is getting worked on. The empty field to the left is where my house used to be. This is why I trust these people - I grew up across the street from them. At least I did after the dog beater and his family moved away and their house burned down and the mechanic built his business.

Out of the blue I got voicemails from two people I haven't heard from in a long time.

First, TrainGirl proved that MiddleNameGuy is full of shit by not only remembering me, but actually calling me.

Second, a flame from over seven years ago somehow got my cell phone number. I'm trying to ignore the stalkerish implications of this and am actively rehearsing the conversation that will take place when I call her back.

I wonder what the hell I'm doing here.

Not here in this universe, in this life, or in this screwed up head. Those questions are better left to the philosophers and psychiatrists.

What I wonder is what the hell I'm doing sitting in this chair, writing in this 'blog.

It's not even a 'blog at all is it? Nope, it's an online journal. Completely different, but I didn't know. And it's too late to change now.

But I digress.

What is it that makes me want to sit here in this chair and write out my innermost feelings and my most mundane activities for all the world to see? Why, even during times like this - times when I'd just as soon dig myself a nice deep hole to sit and cry in, why do I instead choose to sit in this chair and type?

I don't know why I have to do this. I just know that I do.

I once again find myself at the center of a whirlwind of emotions, grabbing desperately, trying to pull these feelings in.

This is not the entry I had in my head.

I'm actually in a good mood. I mean, I'm depressed as shit, but I'm kind of happy about it. Not that I expect that to make any sense.

Maybe to at least one person out there, it will make sense.

Maybe that's why I'm sitting in this chair.

For years all of the dreams ended the same way.

We'd be supremely happy. Blissfully happy. Then she'd leave. And I'd be sad.

There have been several different she's in my dreams over the years. There have been several reasons for her leaving. Usually she'd find somebody new. Somebody better. Sometimes she'd just up and leave. Just like that. And I'd be sad.

Now my dreams are different.

Now, when she leaves me in my dreams, I go after her.

Someday I might even catch her. Get her back.

Then I'll wake up happy for once, until I remember.

Until I remember that it was, after all, just a dream.

My Monte Carlo is sick.

It rarely gets driven in the Winter, and this past winter it didn't get driven at all because of a "check engine" light that came on in November.

So it's either sick or pouting.

My battery is shot, or maybe my alternator. One of my exhaust pipes has a split in it. My cousin says he smells something that indicates the catalytic convertor may be bad.

I took it to the garage and dropped it off with a note that I'd call about it in the morning.

I'll be happy if I end up spending less than two thousand getting it back in tiptop shape. I don't really have a choice. I promised myself when my dad died that I'd either take proper care of the Monte Carlo or I'd sell it to someone who would take care of it.

And I don't want to sell it.

Let's see, an uneventful weekend. Can I make an entry about it anyway?

Friday Rich O's was full of strangers. I spent a good amount of time standing in the annex area talking with Roger and drinking an NABC Noble Smoker. It turns out that they've tapped the last keg of this beer, so I tried to really savor it.

After a million years or so the idiots left the living room area so I went and talked with LibertyGirl for a while until DooRagGirl came in and then they just talked with each other.

I also had an NABC Tunnel Vision.

Friday's lesson learned:

Way too many women have had a certain person's dick inside them. It really doesn't matter how pretty or sweet or smart you are otherwise - if you have voluntarily let that person's dick get inside you, then you are a slut, and I have no interest in you.

On Saturday, Rich O's was dead. The fact that they were closed for Thunder Over Louisville may have had something to do with it. Sportstime, however, was open so I went there and had a Noble Smoker while I pondered the weirdness that is that side of the building.

After a while NotGeorge came in and we talked about our favorite subject for a while. I had an NABC BourbonDaddy which was quite good.

ActualGeorge came over and sat with us for a while.

Saturday's lesson learned:

There are a lot of pretty girls at Sportstime. Most of these girls would never dream of going into Rich O's. But that's okay, because they're all stuck up bitches anyway.

I guess that's it.