The dawn light snakes its way into his refuge, and he opens his eyes to the new day that he thought he'd never see. It is gone, but the deep gashes covering his body tell him that this was no dream - no terrible nightmare from which he has mercifully awakened. Cautiously, carefully, he picks himself up off the ground, pries himself loose from the sticky grasp of his own coagulating blood. The pain is nearly overwhelming, but he does not cry out. He emerges from his hiding place and warily surveys his surroundings.

He is alone, and, to his astonishment, he is no longer afraid.

I feel that a quick reminder is needed.

Tonight my phone has basically rung off the hook.

Some guy I never heard of called a million times, some payphone in Indiana called once, some cell phone in Columbus Ohio just called.

Here's the thing: If I don't know who you are I am not going to answer.

Never.

Ever.

If you know my cell phone number call that one - I have to answer it 'cause it might be work.

If you know my e-mail (hint: daveATbarePANTSnadaDOTcom - remove PANTS first, then do the obvious) then use that.

Hell, I've even put a message form on this website that you can use to contact me. Just remember that it's completely anonymous unless you tell me who you are.

If, however, you really get a kick out of wasting your time, then by all means just keep calling my home number.

Let it ring until Hell freezes over.

I still won't answer it.

I just love my caller-id.

Booked my Easter trip to Portland Maine this morning.

It should be fun, and it will definitely be something new.

I'd like to have time to drive to the Eastern most point in Maine, but that looks like about a 10 hour round trip so I'll probably pass and just make the 6 hour round trip to Montpelier Vermont and back.

Or, I may just hang around Portland if I find enough that interests me on Friday. I'll arrive at around 1:00 PM so I'll be able to get a slight feel for the place before heading to The Great Lost Bear on Friday night.

I'm optimistic that I'll be able to enjoy this trip without feeling the strong need for company. Actually, NotGeorge has expressed an interest in going. We'll see. All I can guarantee is that MixedSignalGirl will not be accompanying me. I've managed to defuse that particular bomb.

The other day I read or heard something that struck a chord in me.

We desperately cling to that which defines us.

I got to thinking, what defines me?

What do I see when I look into the mirror, into my own eyes? Who is it that looks back at me?

I just don't know.

I see nothing but fog and haze where a person once stood. I am in flux. I am shattered pieces of a soul waiting for reassembly. I am a ghost.

What form I'll eventually take, I can't say. What will define me in the coming months?

Will I find something new to cling to, as I clung to my longing and my sadness in the Fall?

Will anything ever come close to affecting me as strongly again?

Because I've finally seen the truth about myself, I can look back at those weeks without fear. I'm more than a little ashamed of what happened to me, and more than a little sorry for feelings I've hurt and concern I've caused, but more than that, I'm amazed at how quickly the person I was evaporated. I'd have never believed that anything could affect me so strongly. Could essentially erase everything I was and turn me into this amorphous thing I see when I look into the mirror.

Those weeks gave definition to my life. Definition that, until then, was obvious and superficial. Husband. Stepfather. Divorced Man. Computer Geek. Pool player. Whoop de fucking doo.

It's no wonder I clung so fiercely to those feelings. They defined me more accurately than any external definition ever had:

Dave
n.
1. Longing
2. Confusion
3. Hope
4. Desperation
5. Paranoia

And you know, all of that was really just the catalyst for the changes that took place inside me. If it hadn't happened then, it would almost certainly have happened some other time. I had gone stale. I was dying for change. All of my preconceived notions about who I was and what I wanted out of life - they were already obsolete way before it happened. All she did was provide the push I needed to step out of my old, comfortable shell and look for something better.

Or at least something different.

What kind of person will I be when my soul has been repaired? Probably pretty much the same person I've always been, at least on the outside. A little warmer, perhaps. Maybe a tad more open. More willing to take a chance. It's the changes on the inside that I'm excited about. I expect to be a better person. To not only get along with myself, but to actually like, dare I say love myself.

These are just guesses - what I hope I will become once I solidify.

I cannot rush these changes, these repairs. I've certainly tried. At times, I've even managed to fool myself into thinking I'd healed myself.

As John Belushi would often say, "But nooooooooooooooo!"

I'd stopped the bleeding, quelled the pain, but the healing only began then - it didn't end.

I look into the mirror and I search for a sign of what I'll become.

Okay, this is weird even for me.

Within a day or two after the full Moons of November, January, and February, I've been contacted by someone I miss terribly.

For whatever reason, December was skipped. As has every other day except those immediately following the aforementioned full Moons.

What's up with that I wonder.

I'm not much into mumbo jumbo - especially the whole full Moon thing - but this has happened three times in the last ninety days, and each of those days came just after a full Moon.

I suppose, since the Moon is apparently able to somehow regulate the flow of blood from vaginas, it could also be influencing some mental functions as well. And I suppose some of that influence could be manifested as a desire for familiar contact or some such.

The thing is, now that I've discovered this pattern, have I also managed to alter it?

Or do I have to wait until late March to hear from her again?

Today I went on a little trek.

I went to this little town (and using the word town here is quite a stretch) named New Boston.

RealTrainGirl and MisunderstoodGirl had told me about this place and I was bored today so I decided to check it out.

Just driving around and exploring is one of the few things that my ex-wife and I enjoyed together, but the women in my life since my divorce have always found it too boring. As a result I haven't really done a lot of exploring lately.

This little town (there's that word again) is easy to find. Just go like you're going to Caesar's and then keep going another 167 bazillion miles until you get to this:

That spot marks where Indiana 111 ends, and if you're sitting where I was as I took this picture, New Boston is behind you and to the left. Right behind the barking dog.

To get home I took some backroads. I know it's actually pretty hard to get lost, but I gave it a hell of a try. I knew I'd eventually hit Hwy 11 or 131 so I basically just kept pointing my truck North as much as the winding roads would allow.

I had fun.

In my never-ending quest to become the most boring person in the world, I present this, yet another entry about going to the bar on Friday night.

Actually, I went to two bars last night.

Woo hoo.

The first one, recommended by some people who's opinions really shouldn't matter to me as much as they do, was this place called Mac's Hideaway.

I was there for thirty, maybe forty seconds.

My new enemy was there, probably hiding from my hatred by avoiding Rich O's, and I didn't see anyone else I knew, so I left.

When I got to Rich O's it was after 10:00, and it was only moderately crowded. I tried to grab a seat on the loveseat but some assholes told me that they might be expecting some people to join them. My official Rich O's regular card must have been lost in the mail so I couldn't pull rank on these jerks, and I sat at the island instead.

My first beer was a Sierra Nevada Harvest Ale. I thought I had tried it last week and wanted to give it another try.

The first big mistake was that I hadn't tried it before - it was Goose Island Honker's Ale I'd been thinking of.

The second big mistake was actually trying this Sierra Nevada crap.

I took one sip and decided that it was just too disgusting for me to risk another. I had the bartender take the vile thing away from me and pour me a Guinness instead.

After a while CoffeeDude came in and joined me and I had an NABC Community Dark. I don't know if they've tweaked the recipe or if my tastebuds simply weren't suffering from sensory overload like they usually are, but it tasted different to me. In a good way.

At one point, lo and behold, the assholes did have some people join them in the living room area. I decided to forgive them for their rudeness because (a) they hadn't been lying to me earlier, and (b) their friends consisted of SweetLookingGirl and TooHotGirl.

I chose that nickname for the latter because after she came in I went out to the front area to make sure that NotGeorge had seen her, and to invite him to join me and CoffeeDude. He told me, "Dave, I just can't go in there. She's just too hot."

Indeed.

At one point some young girl came in and sat with us at the island. I've decided to call her HairGirl because she just wouldn't and/or couldn't stop twisting and twirling with her hair.

Okay Dave, time to start wrapping this up.

Once the living room people left, and the temperature dropped about 20 degrees, CoffeeDude, HairGirl, and I went over to the living room area and I had myself a Piraat.

Once the conversation turned back to coffee I got bored and came home.

ploop!

There's a lot of shit in me, and I do mean a lot, but sometime I feel like it's all become so impacted that it'll never come out.

I think I just got so used to holding it in that I've forgotten how to relax and just let go.

ploop!

So I sit here, straining and red-faced, trying to make something happen so the pressure inside me will ease up, but all I manage to do is

ploop!

Perhaps I need an enema. I'll have some beer tonight and see if that helps clean me out.

Went to Best Buy yesterday and bought a replacement for my failed drive. Also bought a replacement for another drive that's at least six years old and, I figure, due for a meltdown of its own.

On the advice of a coworker I removed the old drive and gave it a little rap with the heel of my hand. Imagine my surprise and delight when I reinstalled the thing and it fired right up.

I was able to transfer all of my files from the old drive before it failed again, this time probably for good.

Once I had both new drives in place, and all of my files transferred from the old drives, I ran a complete backup of everything on my system.

I don't want to have to go through that kind of worry again anytime soon.

In fact, if I wasn't so senile that I left my wallet at home today, I think I'd go ahead and buy a replacement for my third disk as well.

It looks like I've lost one of my hard drives at home.

I got a screech, the system rebooted, and when it came back up it didn't even recognize that a drive was there at all.

I'm moderately freaked out. This disk contained, among other things: all of my e-mail storage, all of my Terragen source files, all of my web site files including those for past versions, and the My Documents folder.

My last backup was probably at least a year ago, so I'm probably looking at a pretty substantial loss.

At least I can get my web site files back - they're all on the public server of course.

I'm just starting to look into some of the professional data recovery service companies. They sound pretty expensive though.

This sucks.