The first part of Friday night I spent like the last parts of most nights. Sitting out on my swing drinking a beer. A Newcastle (10560) in that particular case. BadPickleGirl and I had agreed to "ponder" hanging out for a while, so I called her, left a voicemail, then glared at my phone for a while. But after an hour or so of that, I got bored and went to Louisville to see AlliGirl.

At The Pub, it wasn't nearly as crowded as I'd been expecting. I sat at the bar and had a Newcastle (10580) and talked to AlliGirl when she wasn't too busy. It was nice to see AlliGirl. It had been weeks.

Then I went over to Hard Rock and, lo and behold, CoolHairGirl was working! That was a very nice surprise. Pretty much the opposite of a nice surprise was that somebody had ralphed all over one of the urinals there. Quite disgusting.

I sat at Hard Rock for an hour or so, drinking a Blue Moon (777) and talking to CoolHairGirl. Hard Rock was incredibly dead. It was me at the bar and like three or four other people scattered amongst the tables.

Oh yeah, at one point when I was out in the street I looked to my left and saw my niece and some of her friends. That was quite cool.

Anyway, I started to feel a little guilty at Hard Rock because CoolHairGirl started cleaning everything in anticipation of closing early. Plus I guess I got a little depressed about the same old stuff that I always get depressed about, so I left Louisville and headed for home.

While I was driving home, I got a text from BadPickleGirl, so I called her and we bullshitted over the phone until I pulled into my garage. So that was nice.

Then I sat on my swing and had most of a bottle of Marzen (4901). Sent an email to her, got no response, got depressed about it, then went to bed at 11:30 or so.

I just had the nicest dream.

Of course I can't say who was in the dream or what the dream was about.

I will say, however, that it was all decidedly G-Rated. It was such a nice dream, in fact, that I'm not even all that upset about waking up right before it might have progressed to PG-13.

Before too long, I'll remember that it was only a dream. Until then, I think I'll smile for a while.

So last night was a frustrating bust. An ongoing email-delaying conspiracy between RIM and/or yahoo.com and/or barenada.com, a conspiracy with the single goal of making my life miserable - well last night it reached that goal.

So this morning, I tried again. Just a quick email to follow-up a conversation we'd had Tuesday night.

The reply that I received is the title of this entry.

You might ask what that means. I know that I certainly asked myself.

"Self," I asked, "What does that mean?"

"Fuck off and die."
Now, if you know me at all, or if you don't know me but you read a lot of my drivel, you know that this was the very first thing I thought of. Sometimes it's the only thing I think of. But not this time.

This time, after gazing out my fourth-story window and realizing that a leap from that height would not bring certain death, I did some more thinking. And I figured that with a message like "Fuck off and die," it's probably best to be as unambiguous as possible. That's not really something you want to have to repeat.

So I did even more thinking, and I came up with other possible meanings for that cryptic email.

"I found your email quite boring, and I will reply with the appropriate effort."
I don't really like this one, because it seems to contradict itself. I mean, if my email was truly boring, then wouldn't nothing be the appropriate level of response?

Yeah, that's what I thought, too.

"I am literally on a set, and there must be quiet, so stop making my phone vibrate."
This is at least plausible, as sets do exist, and they do require quiet, and I can certainly picture her gracing the presence of a set. This is my second-favorite explanation.

"I'm busy, leave me alone."
I think I'm going with this explanation. It's goes straight to the point, but it's still strange, presumably so that I don't forget who it's coming from. There's a little bit of personality displayed in the actual words chosen, and I like that very much.

---

I suppose that I'll eventually find out the truth behind those four strange words. Unless my first instinct was actually the correct one. In that case I guess I should start looking for a taller building.

Four bad capacitors on one of the boards. Cost me $365.98 including trip charge.

There'd better be something good on TV soon, but I'm not holding my breath waiting for that to happen.

So often lately I've found myself questioning this journal. Whether it continues to serve any purpose at all. Whether it's causing any harm. Whether it's outlived its usefulness as my voice, to say those things that I could not or would not say out loud.

I feel like I could write pages and pages, if only I were the sole reader. Or if only I'd been smarter, back when I started, and kept myself anonymous.

There are so many things that have occupied my mind and my heart. I've been destroyed all over again. I'm struggling to be reborn all over again. I'm infinitely happy and infinitely sad at the same time. And yet, I've barely brushed the surface here. Sometimes I think that even those light touches upon the truth are too much.

Other times, other times I get a little pissed. This is supposed to be my outlet, not anyone else's entertainment. I should write the whole truth, and if people don't like it, they can stop reading.

But I don't feel like that very often these days. This journal isn't about me, not like it used to be, and I know it. I'm unimportant, and I know it. Irrelevant, and I know it.

I really feel like I'm writing on inertia these days. Writing because it's what I've always done. Or writing because it's expected of me. Or writing to convince people that I'm okay, somewhat normal. But what I'm not doing is writing because I want to write or because I need to write. That want and that need, they definitely exist, but to satisfy them I'd have to stop censoring myself. And I just can't bring myself to do that.

The truth risks too much. By censoring myself I only risk my own sanity.

Kind of a dull day so far. I'm working from home today because I'm waiting for the TV repairman to arrive. It'll be nice to have a working TV in my living room again. That flashing green light is pretty and all, but it doesn't have much of a plot, and the suspense is non-existent.

Besides getting a bunch of actual work done (no distractions) I've removed every cable from every A/V component in my entertainment center, just so I could get back there and be able to push my TV away from the wall. It was all overdue for a recabling anyway. A couple of the components are broken, and some of them I don't use anymore. So I'll take this opportunity to straighten everything out.

I never said this would be an interesting entry.

I just said no to HatGirl.

Let me rephrase that.

I just fucking said no to HatGirl.

It was just for a little favor, but it was one that I couldn't do.

I'm a dick. I never thought I'd ever say no to HatGirl for anything.

Maybe next I'll go out and step on baby ducks or something.

I thought of one possible new nickname. Or maybe it's more of a theme than a nickname. But she won't like it, I bet.

Today was kinda boring, until 1:00 or so, when a series of fortunate events found me having lunch with her at some hippie place in Louisville.

It was pretty weird, even for a hippie place, because instead of sitars and chanting, the music was things like Queen and Led Zepellin.

I think I did a pretty good job. Keeping my eyes in their sockets has become almost second-nature for me, and holding my jaw in a less-than-agape position is something I've been working on. There's still room for improvement there, I think.

I like being perfectly happy, even when it's only for a little while.

It's nice.

The first and second times, I described here. The third time was last night.

I found myself locked out of my house. Again.

Because keys to my house keep disappearing, I've been back down to a single key again for quite a while. I think my cat Nugget eats the keys. But it's one key for one person, so it's usually okay.

But yesterday was my cleaning day, so I took my key off my keychain and left it in its usual hiding place so VacuumLady could get into the house.

Then, when I got home, I retrieved the key from it's hiding place, let myself in, and sat the key on the washing machine.

Several hours later, I went to the store, and when I came home I realized that I'd never put that key back on my keychain.

I'd done it again.

Fuck!

My sledge hammer was still there in my garage. So I knew I could get into my house. I didn't have to worry about sleeping in my truck.

But for some reason I decided to check all of the outside doors and see if, by some miracle, any of them were unlocked.

The second door I tried - the door from my living room to my deck - was unlocked.

Yay!

Except that I wonder how long it's been unlocked. I can't remember the last time I used that door. Several days ago at least.

woohoo!

woohoo!

I'm pretty sure that, should my phone be somehow situated on the far side of the Moon, and myself at the bottom of some deep well or cave here on Earth, I'm pretty sure that I'd still manage to get to it before it could woohoo a third time.

So taking a nap, with my phone not even two feet from my side?

No problem at all. I could do that in my sleep. And I often do.

The strange thing is, my phone checks for new email every 20 minutes. This is hard-wired at the factory or something. I have certainly been unable to figure out how to change that setting.

So how, I wonder, how does it sometimes manage to announce a half-dozen emails in the space of 15 minutes?

It's a mystery, I tell you.

Eventually, of course, I gave up on my nap. Too many woohoos. Too many occasions to pry open my eyes and fumble a one-thumbed reply. Too many protests from my cat Nugget, wondering no doubt why he once again picked my left shoulder on which to sleep.

I'm not complaining. The emails are coming from her, after all.

But as soon as I arose from my couch, as soon as I cleared the fog from my head, the emails stopped. The woohoos stopped.

Okay, so maybe I'm complaining just a little.