Shiprock, in Arizona I think.

Step one: Tell him you'll call him back.

Step two: I don't like this game, and I'm not going to play it anymore.

Today, like most days for the past few weeks, I've spent at least part of the time feeling sorry for myself.

I got to thinking about just why this is.

How did I end up this way?

I'm not wondering about the recent events that have me in such turmoil. Instead, today I'm wondering about the events in my life that made me into this goofball I see in the mirror. This goofball that's been so affected by these events.

How did I end up to be this person that I am, this person that controlled the keys to his own happiness for over a decade, then out of the blue just pitched them to a person that didn't asked for them, didn't expect them, and didn't want them?

A year ago, I could tell you exactly how I came to be. A year ago it all made perfect sense. A life made up of a series of rejections and betrayals and loss had caused me to wall myself in - to pretend that I didn't need anyone besides myself, that I was perfectly content on my own.

I did such a good job of pretending that it all came true. I didn't need anyone else. I was perfectly content.

What the hell happened?

If anyone had told me a year ago that I'd be writing an entry like this today I'd have laughed in their face. Pretty much like a certain relative of mine laughed when I stupidly thought he'd be a good person to confide in.

Part of me still wants to laugh. It's all just so absurd.

In a moment of weakness and/or drunkenness I pitched my keys at someone who had their back turned.

They landed on the ground instead, and on the ground they still sit. Mocking me.

(response to message)

Why thank, you. I am feeling better today and even went back to work.

An image I actually rendered on Tuesday but didn't publish until tonight.

I've been sick.

(response to message)

I think that's interesting because I spent the last few years of my Seattle time missing New Albany and feeling stranded in Washington.

Rich O's is awesome though, so we agree on that much. Look me up there sometime - we'll compare notes.

I miss The Mountain.

My sister's fiance has this truck that cracks me up.

It's a Dodge, extended cab, dually wheeled, long bed monster that will come in quite handy if he ever needs to, I don't know, maybe tow my sister's house a few feet to the right or something.

Watching him pull into my driveway yesterday was like watching the Queen Mary pull into port.

Right off the bat, I need to make one thing perfectly clear.

This was all my fault. She did nothing wrong. She was always a lady. She was the perfect wife.

She just wasn't my wife.

She was married to one of my best friends. A friend who trusted me enough to ask me to keep his wife company while he was away serving our country.

It still amazes me how quickly it all happened.

For months I kept my word to my friend and, in the process, gained an even stronger friendship. For months we talked and hung out and drank and smoked together. It was the best period of my life.

Then it started. A nagging little feeling in my heart that began to grow each time we were together.

I tried to shake it off. I told myself that there was no way I could have those kinds of feelings for someone I'd never even kissed. There was no way I could betray a friendship (two friendships!) like that. I kept telling myself that it wasn't real, that it was just a phase.

I was kidding myself, and I knew it.

I'd been trusted with that which my friend prized most in the world, and, even if it was in mind only, I'd betrayed that trust. I had to get away before my terrible secret was exposed.

Those last few weeks when I rushed my Air Force discharge through, and prepared to move away - those weeks took all of the willpower I had in me. If I could just keep my feelings to myself for a little while longer, if I could just get the hell away before I blurted them out in some drunken soliloquy, I could limit the pain to myself.

It hurt to leave, but it would have hurt far more to stay. My betrayal would never have become our betrayal, and it was only a matter of time before my secret would be exposed or guessed.

For a while, after I left, we wrote each other. I even went to visit once, partly as a friend, but mostly to see if my feelings remained.

They did.

Once I returned to Seattle, I told her in a letter. I told her the words I'd only told - and meant it - two women before her. I thought she deserved a reason for what came next...

Later in the same letter, I told her goodbye.

Ours was a relationship based on sex.

What a strange realization that was!

I was freshly off my marriage, she was - well I'm not quite sure what her story was. She was looking for a place to stay for a while. Whatever, I figured there was a breakup in her recent past as well.

A place to sleep became a person to talk to became somebody to hold me became God I need an orgasm so bad I can't stand it!

I was there to provide all those things. She in turn helped me to get through what was, at the time, the toughest trial I'd ever faced.

For several weeks we led completely separate lives. I had my work and my pool league. She had her work and whatever it was she did after work. Our lives did not touch each other's at all - except at home. In bed. Our fumbling attempts to fill the gaping holes in our relationship only proved how completely different we were.

When the bills started getting too high and I had to move to a cheaper place she didn't come with me. We didn't even discuss it. We both knew that it was time to move on, to get on with our lives.

A couple of years later I saw her at a convenience store. I was with my ex-wife, in the middle of my second and final disastrous attempt to build a life with her. She was alone, but several months pregnant. We exchanged phone numbers but that was just for show. Just to be polite and to pretend that we had our shit together.

I can't even remember her last name.

I did an awful lot of driving around town this weekend.

On Saturday I managed to get myself totally lost twice while trying to retrace a shortcut I was shown a while ago. I had no luck except that I nearly freaked out when I thought I saw a familiar car in a driveway.

On Sunday I found myself back in Lanesville. I usually make it down there every month or so. I'll drive up to the old house at the top of the hill, hoping to see someone out in the yard.

"Hi, I have home movies of your house being built," I'll say. "Let me and my sister come in and snoop around and I'll make you a copy."

In the 25 years the I've been doing this, I've never seen a single person outside.

I've also never got up the nerve to actually knock on the door, though a friend of mine did just that a few months ago to no avail.

Anyway, yesterday there was something very different about the old neighborhood.

The house that had sat behind my old house for nearly 40 years was gone. Only a foundation and a pile of rubble remained.

I saw some sk8er boiz down by the school and I asked them what had happened to the house.

"It burned a few weeks ago," one of the kidz conceded.

Pretty weird to see just a pile of rubble where my best friend Kelly used to live.