#230 - Life's Like That

So everything with Nicky has been going along fairly well - enough so that I noticed the usual balance of life trends occuring again.

Every time I feel good mentally, something goes wrong with me physically.

Warning - Relatively Descriptive Male Health Description Coming Up.

That was your warning.

No bitching later when you read this and get freaked out.

It's no secret that I've been ill for the past few weeks, but as I may or may not have mentioned here, I've been experiencing some groin pain again as of late. Any number of things could have contributed to it. I just remember playing DDR with Will and stepping off the pad to feel a strange pain down low in the jumblies, and every time I moved in a way that caused the pain to continue, I got nailed with all sorts of discomfort; both down there and in the form of nausea and even a headache. It's been uncomfortable ever since.

In fact, I'm feeling nauseated from it again right now.

Anyway, I'm thinking it may just be a muscle thing, because I've actually experienced a similar feeling before and it's passed after a few trying days. In fact, that was the time where I ended up going to the hospital with the impression that I had a urinary tract infection and ended up being wrong. Similar symptoms were there, including pain whenever I...'finish the job,' so to speak.

That in itself makes me think that it's a muscle tear or a hernia or something. The end of that 'act' encompasses contraction of several different muscles in the lower area, so I shouldn't be surprised that I've experienced pain from that. It doesn't explain why I feel kind of tender otherwise, although I suppose it's certainly possible for the two to be related.

What this essentially boils down to is that I need to suck it up and see a doctor no matter how much it costs. I've had plenty of discomfort over the past few years - it could easily be a result of my back injury when I worked at Weis that maybe never healed properly, or it could be something more serious like cancer.

As usual, I'm significantly freaked out, but I think I should probably just try to make an appointment with a doctor for next week. I can't really get off Thursday or Friday now anyway, and most of them are closed on Saturdays and such...and the next few days may result in some change. In the meantime, I should spend less time in this chair and maybe apply ice and just relax.

Hopefully this cold will subside soon too.

And stuff.

~Don

#229 - Weekend

This weekend has been relatively boring, and I'm very much looking forward to tomorrow where I should hopefully run into Nicky and have the opportunity to make plans for the coming week. At some point I have to give her what I bought her as well, and I'm still dancing on pins and needles a bit over that. For some reason, probably a lack of better things to do, I've been comtemplating the events of the past week in an attempt to reevaluate the situation.

I want to make sure I haven't jumped the gun here and assumed too much about us. In the first few minutes of thought I was skeptical - maybe I was misinterpreting things that have occured and allowed my overbearing imagination to create a fantasy reality where this is all going very well, she likes me plenty, and essentially has become my girlfriend. I don't really know where the doubt suddenly came from, but it was nagging me enough to the point where I stared emptily into space for an unknown amount of time before remembering that this open blog window was still sitting here.

Honestly, I don't think I've made a mistake in my assessment of this situation, though. The more I think about it, the more sure I am about the entire situation. It's not the DayQuil; this is really happening, and that goofy feeling I've had in the pit of my stomach is proof of that.

I think I'm just a bit afraid of what happens from here, because I don't really know what I'm supposed to do. I have no experience in the subject to fall back upon, so of course I'm a bit hesitant in my decisions thus far. I need to not be that way, though. What I need is to simply go in to work tomorrow and proceed as I have been, and just have fun in general. There's no reason for me to get caught up in stress over this when it's going well - I'm likely to create unnecessary drama from it.

Work should be relatively painful tomorrow though. It's only a few days from Christmas, and this time around - the children are once again off of school. On one hand, this painful fact means that it will most certainly be a stressful day. On the other hand, this means we should probably have adequate amounts of help in the store - at least enough to get by, I would think. Furthermore, I'm off until after Christmas, so it's a one day misery fest.

Tonight's been nothing but sneezing, coughing, and the usual. The groin is still a bit tender, but I'm trying not to freak out about it; this isn't the first time I've experienced this feeling, and it usually passes in a few days if I take it easy. Obviously I'm on a bit of a Dance Dance Revolution break, which originally was going to be just for the weekend, but I think I'll extend it through the rest of this week. I have a good time playing that game though, so it's hard to let it go, particularly when I know I'm getting better at it.

In the meantime I've plugged a few hours into Wild Arms 3. Not a bad game overall, but it's definitely not easy. Healing characters in battle seems to be relatively difficult, and many of the status ailments I've been nailed with are ones that I have no items with which to cure them. Fighting one boss battle left Virginia and Gallows with the 'Heartbroken' condition, which prevents them from using any Force Powers or magic, which essentially eliminates both characters that are capable of healing the entire party in one round - Virginia could use FP "Mystic" to extend a regular item to heal the entire party, and Gallows could use FP "Extension" to make his healing magic spread to the whole party.

The problem was, the effect didn't even wear off after battle, and I managed to get into a more difficult boss battle just a few rooms down that was completely unexpected. It was not easy, and left me thinking I may need to slow down and do the usual building up thing a bit more. Or maybe not. Who knows.

In any case, nothing much has happened up here. Sick as I've been (according to my archives I've had this coughing problem since at least December 8th), I'm still looking forward to going to work tomorrow. In fact, now seems like a good time for me to take my nighttime cold medicine so the drowsiness will set in soon, and I can go to bed early. No real reason to stay up tonight; no one's been online for most of the day and it's really too late to start doing anything else.

~Don

#228 - Ineptitude, Part 2

I bought Nicky a Christmas present today, which is somewhat unlike me. I wasn't sure if I even should have done so this early on, but I felt like I really wanted to do so, and I did. The difficult part is that I really have very little to go on since we're still kind of learning about each other and things aren't perfectly official yet, but no matter what I just really wanted to get her something that she'd like.

I'm a terrible gifter though. Most people know me to just buy gift certificates every year because of it's simplicity in the matter - you can go buy whatever you want after Christmas when more things are likely to be going on sale anyway, and you can decide how to make use of the cash in a way that befits you, instead of taking the chance that I'll buy you something you'll hate or something you'll never use. This probably came about from getting so many retarded presents from people, most of which are on my father's side of the family, that have little or no thought behind them whatsoever, so why go out and struggle then?

Come on, one of them bought me a freaking Baltimore Ravens scarf, for crominy's sake. And I'm barely a football fan.

And this isn't even close to including all the lame ass t-shirts my father's sister sends every year that are in a pile in the basement to go to Goodwill, because I've never worn them and never will.

So point being, I was really concerned with how to go about buying Nicky a gift. I feel like it's too early into things to really go crazy and buy expensive stuff, but I also wanted to get something that said two things - that I have been paying attention, at least to a certain extent, to the things she liked and I would get a gift that would correspond as such, and something that was a decent enough gift to let her know I'm serious about her in case my words aren't enough.

Plus, I just really wanted to get her something. That's the most important one of all.

I remembered when we walked through Sears a few weeks ago that she looked a necklace with a fairly large ornament on it. I don't recall much about it except it was a mix between green and blue and had some kind of design, but I remember her saying something about it - it seemed important enough at the time that I bookmarked it in my brain apparently, because when I decided I was going to get her something, that became the model. A necklace, and it had to be silver. I've never seen her wear anything gold or otherwise.

This seemed a bit difficult though because most of the necklaces I looked at today were total shit, and I was trying not to spend too much here. I really didn't want to blow her out of the water with some overly expensive gift, but most of the things I found were too expensive. My mother suggested we stop at the...uh, Bon Ton, I think, because she always likes the jewelry there.

And it seems like my mother and Nicky have some similar tastes, so I followed her advice.

I looked through some necklaces in a rack there and found a few that I wanted to see up close, so the lady opened the rack and pulled them out. It was at this time I discovered the rack was actually all half price stuff, which was good news, I suppose, because I could now go a bit more exotic if I chose to. Unfortunately, the first couple were not much to my liking, until the lady ran her fingers through one of the hangers in the rack and my mother spied one that seemed something like what I described.

The lady behind the counter pulled it out and I noticed the price tag - $175.00.

I might have seriously considered buying it even if it weren't half off. The more I looked at it, the more I thought she'd like it. It was as I had told my mother earlier when we first got to the mall -- I felt like I'd see something that would catch my eye and it would have her name all over it in my mind, and that would be my best bet. Of all the ones I looked at, I figured this was the one. I'm not even sure how to describe the necklace - but I liked it enough that I only left the store for about five minutes after telling her I had some places I still wanted to look before I came back and bought it.

And they tell me for whatever reason there's an extra fifteen percent on their stuff today. So it ended up being seventy-eight dollars or so, which was still more than I wanted to spend, but I think it's worth it.

Now though, because I'm so unaccustomed to really shopping for people - I'm really anxious to give it to her as quickly as possible, and I'm definitely paranoid as to whether or not she'll like it. I guess we'll see. I hope I'm not sending the wrong message by spending so much right away though.

Friends...girls in particular, any thoughts?

~Don

#227 - Happiness?

"I don't want to let go. I can't help but be afraid that I won't find your hand again if I do."

So I haven't blogged in a few days, and in the absence of doing so I've been wondering exactly how much I should write out in here in relationship to Nicky from now on. To a certain extent, it's nice to be able to talk about the things that have gone on between us in the past few days, but at the same time I can't help but think that perhaps I need to emphasize a bit more caution when it comes to what I write for public eye.

One thing to keep in mind though - hardly anyone comes here anymore, or so I believe anyway. I notice the little counter on the bottom still rising a bit each day, but I figure out of those that are visiting, only a few of them know me directly and are not just friends I made via AIM over the past couple of years. In that case, it probably doesn't hurt that I divulge the words exchanged between us or the things that occur, but I can't help but wonder if I tell too much, it will come back to bite me in the ass down the road.

For the most part however, I've stopped advertising my blog. Ever since Great Justice formed, that has become my 'homepage' for guestbooks and links and stuff, unless I'm commenting on someone else's blog. I imagine I probably have a fair amount of anonymity on here now from friends who never bookmarked the blog because I left it in my AIM buddy information, but nonetheless I still feel a bit worried about just tossing everything out that was said.

I suppose it's okay as long as I focus on what I say and my thoughts? Who knows. Anyway, on with the show.

The past few days have been pretty fun, considering that I've been dead tired, hurt my groin to the point of swelling in certain locations that causes nausea when I move my leg a certain way, and have more-or-less been down with flu action all week alongside actually having to work a full week for the first time in awhile under heavy retail circumstances. "Patty Mayonnaise," who I should just call Nicky since that's her name, has been around and after having our first real talk about my feelings for her, she's been going to various boring places with me after work since there isn't much else to do around here.

And then things just kind of went from there. It started with her just sort of sleeping on my shoulder on a sofa in the quiet section of the mall where we just sort of whispered to each other for awhile, and then the next time it involved some kind of 'poke Don in the skull repeatedly' game that eventually involved into all-out war, which in turn caused me to take her hand...and then not let go. Later we found ourselves just sitting in her car, hand-in-hand, having a heart-to-heart, and really just being genuine to the core.

When I finally left there at 11:30 ( an hour after I had said I was going to leave ), everything was locked down and I had to walk most of the length of the mall to get to my car. Apparently several people who worked at the mall had seen it there and wondered where I had disappeared to, leaving all sorts of cute questions when I came in this morning.

And then today, we went for a walk and came back when my break ended holding hands, and there was a collective gasp from just about everyone that worked in the store.

It's just been nice. I almost want to use the term magical, but I feel like that would be hexxing it in some way or something. It's not that I'm overly obsessed or something, it's just that this closeness is something I've never experienced, and it's like each minute is something new and unreal. A part of me keeps wondering when it's just going to stop - but I don't think it is. It isn't like Marin or anything like that. I know she likes me. And I feel much better in knowing that I was able to tell her how I felt, and I look forward to seeing her again next week.

I keep replaying the words we exchanged in her van and hoping I never forget them. It's still very hard to believe.

I also feel kind of dorky, but that's to be expected, I suppose.

~Don

#226

I'm pretty tired. Today has been a somewhat eventful day, both as far as work and as personal affairs.

Work will continue to suck basically every day until sometime soon after the first of the year, in which case the children will finally be back to school and I'll finally have plenty of time to get work again. Indeed. It should be a return to a time where I can work several hours and maybe only see three or four customers, but I'll be able to fly through in typical Don fashion to get tons of work done. It'll be nice to be able to go to work and actually not feel stressed out because I have lofty expectations placed upon me by the man whilst fighting through crowds and ubercrowds of retarded people who can't seem to understand that things are listed alphabetically, and are clearly too lazy to find out for themselves.

"Patty Mayonnaise" told me that she was mad at me today, because she was trying not to 'like me.' This quickly led to me finding a quiet spot to discuss how I felt. It didn't really get too far, but I told her that I wasn't going to push too much, but I felt like there could be something good between us. I also told her, and perhaps I shouldn't have but I guess it's the truth, that if she decided against going out with me that I was still at a part where I could recover and still just be her friend without me feeling any ill will towards her. Maybe I shouldn't have said it, but it felt like it needed to be said. I told her that I looked forward to seeing her all of the time but I tried to keep collected while I did so.

But most of that conversation between us was disjointed; partially because I couldn't manage to speak too many words without coughing, partially because I think we're both socially retarded, and partially because of several other reasons. But at least I can take some solace in the fact that I was honest. We hung out a bit more and I tried to make her feel a bit better about a situation that arose while we were there, and then when she had to go take her other final I just walked her out to her car.

We'll see how things go tomorrow, and for the rest of the week, I guess.

It's premature, but I feel like I should get her something for Christmas. She seems to like Christmas penguins for some reason, so I'm going to keep on the lookout in the mall for something like that. I don't really have a firm grasp on what else to get her yet, which makes this such an awkward gift-giving position. I think that's why I should look for something penguin-y - something simple and not overally obnoxious or even expensive, but something that I know she'll like.

Or maybe something like that and something else that might be out of place? I don't know. I'll just have to keep an eye out later this week, and if there's something that catches my eye, I should just get it.

Still, I'm trying to keep a level head about everything. Nothing has been established here, you know?

~Don

#225 - Confusion

At first it looked weird, but I realized that if I can't come up with a decent, short-worded title, maybe it's better that I put up no title at all. Sometimes the irony is kind of cute, and sometimes the juxtaposition of the title and the subject matter is sort of interesting, but I find some nights that I spend more time debating over what to call the entry then I actually do writing it. Upon occasion I wait to start the entry until I find the title, but a lot of the time I simply title it after I finish typing, which probably makes more sense.

It works well except when I forget to go back to the beginning to insert the title.

Anyway.

So on my Livejournal today I touched briefly on the confusing events that have transpired between me and the girl I now dub "Patty Mayonnaise." Why I've gone to the lengths I have to do so as of late is beyond me, considering that I've already used her name on here and on there, but I suppose maybe I'm preventing my 'diaries' of choice from appearing several thousand times if she were to Google her name and DDR or something. Let's go play-by-play, shall we, as we come to the conclusion that I have the social skills of a 6th grader.

- Little girl who's mother works at Villa Pizza decides to blackmail me, repeatedly, when she figures out that I like 'Patty Mayonnaise,' and chooses to do so in front of her, arousing suspicion.
- We go to FSK mall for the first time.
- Fat guy who shall remain nameless is asked by 'Patty' about the blackmail. Fat guy announces that he doesn't know what it is. "Patty" says she thinks it's that I like her, and says that she's basically thought that for awhile now but wasn't sure.
- While swordfighting ( weird, but true ), "Patty" attempts to bring it up, but any chance I have to respond is disrupted by a thrust that nearly throws me off the Skeeball machine because I was beginning a look of shock towards her when Will attacked.
- Subject dies temporarily. We go to FSK mall again. I buy her lunch there. Later, she tells me that "she shouldn't have let me do that."
- Fat guy who shall remain nameless, "Patty," and myself go to Applebee's. Fat guy tries to help me out without my request by bringing up the blackmail at the table and asking what she thought it was about, feigning forgetfulness. She, rather blatantly, points out that it's "about Don liking me," and then looks at me with a smile hiding a bit of a confused look. Not wanting to have the conversation in the busy restaurant with the fat guy sitting there right next to us, I just kind of flush blood red and make a strange face that I can't seem to recollect. Fat guy goes "You mean you knew?" I buy her dinner; she later says once again that she feels bad about having me do that.
- Urge to kill Fat Guy (who's really not fat, but that's sort of the running joke) is born.
- Due to conversation about "Emo Girl's" crush on "Lanky Guy" with Fat Guy and "Patty," "Lanky Guy" decides to bring up the fact that 'romance seems to be popping up in the store all over the place,' and proceeds to point out my apparent mini-crush. Fat Guy once again decides to move in and ask her how she feels about that. She apparently blushes and replies with a somewhat strange "I don't know," according to Fat Guy himself.
- Urge to kill Fat Guy becomes immense. Urge to kill Lanky Guy is born.

So I feel really stupid now because this gives off the impression that I'm sending people to more-or-less interrogate her to find out whether she likes me or not, and that's totally not the case. Such a problem is born from my big mouth and basically asking for advice from two people, who of course could not keep their mouths shut, thus making this my fault anyway. The whole deal has such a middle school feel to it; and after all this nonsense I'm left still wondering what it all means.

This basically forces me to come clean with it as soon as possible before this goes any further downhill, but it's very difficult to find a time and a place to hold the conversation. At this point I may have to settle with somewhere in the mall on my lunchbreak, because I'm doing the forty hour thing Monday through Friday this week, so we won't be going to FSK mall, I'm guessing. The only other thing I can do is try to invite her to dinner again, even if it means she has to pay her own way to get her to go, and try to discuss this at a quiet restaurant.

I believe she also works around five tomorrow, which means she may very well be at the mall. Since I have nothing better to do, I may call Brent in advance to find out if she's there, and just go spend time with her tomorrow. Perhaps I can get in touch with Ryan to make plans for the evening so I don't have to go down there just for her, which may make her feel weird.

But I do need to just talk to her about it. Seriously. I just don't know when.

~Don

#224 -

I'm a bit sleepy tonight and have very little to say, but I feel the urge to blog once more nonetheless. So bear with me (bear with me, bear me with, but be with me tonight) as it could quite possibly become a ramble. I've been stressing myself out unnecessarily for awhile now, mostly because of the windshield wiper on my car. Recap number one, go -

Last week I found myself brushing a great deal of snow off my car so I could go to work. At one point, I pulled the driver's side wiper up as I would any time I do the windshield at a gas station, but it moves in a somewhat funny way - likely a cause of the cold weather or something. In any case, I was already on my way out the door and didn't really see a need to address it much more after the first few minutes of fiddling with it. I just let it back to rest even though the wiper didn't exactly reach the windshield anymore. It just kind of floated a half-inch above it and rattled as a drove.

Sunday came, and another Anime Loser Day was upon us. After meeting Kelly and Jason at the mall, we set out to the Palace of Power. When I stopped to get gas, I let those guys fiddle with the wiper to see if they could get it back into place. I went in to pay for gas, and when I came back out, the arm was completely off the car. This wasn't such a big deal, I figured, because now it prevented the arm from falling off in middrive. I figured Jerry could probably fix it, and he probably could have. Later he pointed out that the blade was basically completely worn off and that I should stop by Wal-Mart to buy new blades on Tuesday, and he'd put them on Tuesday night since he was off Wednesday and planned to be up relatively late. This should have worked relatively well, as I had to go meet Nicky at the mall anyway so I would easily be within a few minutes of Wal-Mart at several points in the day.

She decides to go along with me to the mart because she apparently has nothing else to do until her evening appointment to take her dog to the vet, and after struggling for a bit to figure out what I was supposed to buy, I walked out of there with two new windshield wipers. Everything was going well - I'd get home, Jerry could snap the wiper arm back on, and I could plug the wipers in nice and quickly just in time for Wednesday morning's winter storm of freezing rain.

Except because of the weather, they asked Jerry to work on Wednesday, so even though I got home at what should have been a decent time, he had already gone to bed. This left me in a bit of a bind, because there was probably no way they would have time to do the wiper stuff in the morning before work, and I really needed to make some money, so I figured I would just try to do it myself.

The new wipers snapped into place relatively easily, and I lined the arm up to where I figured it was supposed to go, basically parallel to the wiper that was still attached to the car. Unlike a lot of cars, my wipers work in concert and not in an alternating pattern, so it made sense to me that I should install the arm lined up with the other. Simple enough. Except when I tested my wipers, the driver's side one decided to start wiping half of my hood instead of the windshield, and immediately shattered the new wiper before essentially becoming stuck there. Obviously I couldn't risk turning the wipers back on to move the arm - it would have not only scratched the hood more, but could have cracked the windshield. Ok, that sucked, but I figured I could just snap the arm off and readjust it, and then move the passenger side wiper or even the original blade back on to the left one so I could at least see out of that side of my window a bit.

Then the arm wouldn't come back out. At all. And I had already been outside for a relatively long time, in the dark, and in the cold. I got horribly frustrated and took the remaining parts back in the house and gave up, hoping maybe I would get lucky and the freezing rain would end before I woke up - leaving me with only the usual winter scraping to do and not a need for the actual wiper.

It would have been great; I would have had plenty of time to get it fixed at some point. But of course, it rained until almost six'o'clock, which meant that I never got the chance to even try to go to work, and I couldn't go anywhere during the day.

Typically that's not such a big deal on my day off, but the weather caused the power to shut off for several hours, which essentially left me stranded with a bunch of pets, no food, and almost nothing with which to entertain myself.

Anyway, when the power came back on, we shot a call over to Kevin, but he wasn't able to look at my car that evening. So now I'll be waking up early to take it to him tomorrow, which could easily lead to me being late to work, but they're just going to have to deal. Worst case scenario would be finding out that he couldn't fix it or needed a part, because it's supposed to rain again on Friday and I'd essentially be stuck in the exact same predicament on Friday morning, stranding myself at home and leaving my work shorthanded again, which apparently led to them being unable to open the arcade until one'o'clock in the afternoon (not like they'd have made much money before then anyway given the weather, but still). With my luck, he won't be able to fix it...but let's really hope for the best here. I need to get to work, both so I can get money for the holidays, and so I can see 'the girl.'

Yes, I'm that much of a loser. We had another trip on Tuesday as I mentioned, but I just don't feel like typing anymore tonight.

~Don

#223 - Ineptitude

Have I used that as a title before? It seems familiar, but then given the amount of time I've been referring to myself as 'socially inept,' I wouldn't be surprised at all that the term seems glaringly familiar as I write this. And really, I don't know how well the term exactly fits to the events of today, but it seemed like an easy place to start. Coming up with titles has never been my strong point.

In any case, I made a slightly brash move tonight that ended up being a waste of time. When I got back to Westminster from Anime Loser Day, I dropped off Kelly and Jason, the two guys that decided to check out some stuff with us today, and suddenly got this great idea.

'The girl' keeps me company at work all the time; why not go visit her while she was at work? I'm almost positive she was working today starting at four, so I decided to stop by. It seemed like kind of futile maneuver though, and for the ride over I felt very paranoid about what I was doing. Suddenly more self conscious. Sitting in the parking lot for a few minutes with a lump in my throat, I wondered what to say when I ran into her.

I didn't wait long; I knew if I had that I would have changed my mind and pulled away. It should be too hard, I thought. You don't have to have a reason to be there. Just tell her the truth and see what happens, you know?

Tell her you were thinking about her and wanted to see her before you went home since you were in the area. Tell her you understand if she can't talk too long because her work might be different from yours. Tell her something. But go in there."

All this thinking ended up being for naught, as I wandered the store for a good ten minutes and never saw her. Instead of asking someone to find her, I just left.

Maybe she wasn't there. Who knows. I should be satisfied with the fact that I actually went in to visit, but I feel like I should have made more effort to find her. What if she had been there and saw me, and I didn't see her? That would have been a bad thing - she'd have thought I was ignoring her or something.

I'll try to just let it go for tonight and fuss about it to her tomorrow. For now I'm going to chat a bit more with Graham and search some sites, and hopefully go to bed at a decent hour.

In any case though, today was a pretty good day. The usual happened and people bailed, leaving me waiting at the mall, but thankfully Kelly and Jason showed up to make the trip not a total waste. Decent guys. Too bad some other people didn't bother going even though they clearly could have, but then again, I don't really care all that much about that. I'm getting used to everyone's excuses, and I'm definitely getting used to people bailing on me.

Fortunately we only do this is as a once a week thing, maybe less, which alleviates minor fits of frustration.

~Don

#222 - Down With the Sickness

I feel like something is wrong with my lungs when I cough. It's probably nothing, but you know how it is with colds, particularly with men. We get whiny and insecure and weak and all sorts of other things, believing we're halfway in our deathbeds because of coughing and wheezing. I did find it unusual that when I blew my nose this morning there was blood, but it's not like that hasn't happened before either. It is a bit eerie and disconcerting, but I think it's probably nothing. Knowing the way I've been thrashing about at night when I'm trying to fall asleep, I wouldn't be surprised if I've broken my own nose.

I just haven't slept well at all lately. It could be a multitude of factors, but when I lie in bed, it doesn't seem to matter anymore if I feel tired. I just can't get to sleep. It's starting to wear on me a bit too, and that's not something I need, particularly right now.

In other news, not too long ago I put a deposit in my checking account, and two bills I just got cleared it out again. I should be getting used to that, but it still bothers me quite a bit. It's important that I remember that I still make less than I used to make, and I've been spending money with 'the girl' a lot lately too, so even though we haven't had an Anime Loser Day in awhile, I'm still not making any huge progress.

Maybe I should just be satisfied that I'm not sinking and keep looking for another job. Kind of pointless to do anything with Christmas so close though; might as well just kill the holiday season off first.

One thing at a time.

On a brighter note, I haven't gotten any more letters from the stupid MVA recently. My nonexistant Maryland Driver's License was suspended, but I managed to get the tags back and the insurance company was supposed to contact them again, so hopefully they have this all worked out. I have a feeling though that if I ever move back to Maryland, I'm going to have to battle their screwed up records once more.

So maybe I won't move back there. Pennsylvania isn't too bad, there's just not much around where I live. I should think about getting a job in Philadelphia or Pittsburgh or something - I'm sure there's money to be made there, and Justine would be at least a bit closer so I could finally take her to Walmart or something once in awhile.

In any case, I've been really looking forward to seeing 'the girl' again. I guess love really can be blind - someone asked me the other day why I was interested in someone who wasn't that attractive, but I find her attractive. I did a little bit at first, but I feel more attracted to her with each passing day. I can't really help it; she's easy to talk to, though it's hard to tell where our 'relationship' is going, if it's even worthy of being called a 'relationship' at all.

I don't really care what anyone else thinks about her anyway. As long as we're enjoying each other's company, what other people think about it is really no concern of mine.

I really need to do something about not knowing what's going on though. There's a lot of things I need to learn about, and this situation is ideal for it. Doesn't mean it's any easier, but no matter what happens in it, at least I'll have gained some amount of experience of some kind or something.

Losing focus and flaunting comma-whoredom, so I'm calling it quits for tonight.

~Don

#221 - Trivial

I have a friend who's very pushy. Thank the heavens it's someone I only know on the internet.

Long story short, he used to roleplay Suikoden with the group of us that played a couple of years ago on AOL. Good times were had with that RP, and everyone involved always tells me how much they miss it or would be willing to do it again from time to time. Truthfully, I've already had three commitments from three other players who were involved frequently enough to count, and I'm almost certain that I could convince Beth to reprise her role again.

The great thing about this is that this time around none of us will be wasting our time in online roleplaying guilds like OCS - the kind that suck up your free time and eventually cause you to almost loathe the concept of RP in general. That's a period that I went through and I think subsequently grew out of, and lately I feel like I'm back to where I used to be: it's a hobby that's decent for killing time here and there, and it's easy to start.

You just need someone who types, and you go. And this time around, since I'm not busy playing some overworked Legion Commander, I'm free to just play the game without all the technicalities involved, and without fear of being sucked into spending all my free time sitting in front of the PC looking for people to play the game with. It would be something to do whenever I'm having one of those nights where I'm not doing much of anything - perhaps just listening through some CDs (I'm anal about playing video games without music, you see, so if I'm listening to a CD I won't play a regular game), or typing something up, or perhaps even studying. Whatever. But it wouldn't be all encompassing; just something to do with people that I know are decent at the game and not in some semi-retarded effort to increase their "dice."

So that long-story-short ended up being a bit long. Forgive me.

In any case, the individual in question is hung up on the idea of playing a "Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game," commonly known as an RPG. These are the kinds that people have to pay some fee to play each month, and really, the concept in just about every case is the old arcade game Gauntlet, with a bunch of bells and whistles. You roam the countryside of wherever and jam a button or two to attack monsters and build up your stats to find items and you interact with other citizens.

The problem, or rather, my major problem with this entire genre is that there really is almost no roleplaying involved. Even if you take it seriously and craft a history and really actually play the character, at least half the population of these games will approach you with inane cursing, l33t speak, or basically just real life talking. It's irritating to be involved with your friends and playing a story only to have someone barge in and repeatedly key "dos n e 1 hve a dbl sabr."

If you're keeping score at home, that's Phantasy Star Online.

Now don't get me wrong, I had a good time playing PSO with my friends, but it's also a very tedious deal. And once again we deal with a general lack of actual roleplaying - you're more of an inventory manager and arcade button masher then anything else, because in most MMORPGs, there's no central plot. You usually end up just moving from place to place and doing whatever, or moving around from place to place with no reason besides boredom.

I can't get into that. I'm all about the idea of doing text-based RP in my spare time only with people who actually would make an effort at it, but this guy is totally against it.

I believe he said "I think that time is way past dude. No one's interested in that anymore."

The punchline, albeit not a very humorous one, is that he's really the only one in the matter who isn't interested.

But I can't seem to explain this to him clearly enough. He's very hardheaded, and it gets aggravating to have to listen to him peddle it to me all the time no matter how many times I explain it, so now I've gotten into the habit of just kind of skirting the issue or basically saying "Right on, but I'll have to talk about it with you later. Working on something right now."

The kicker, I suppose, is that this is really a pointless thing to be fretting about, but in any case, suggestions? Of course, I'm looking for something other then Dave Corun's notorious "..... and block," tactic.

And in relation to #220, we're heading up to play DDR again on Tuesday. At least that's the tentative plan.

~Don

#220 - What?

So, little known fact, I went out with Nicky on Wednesday. It really wasn't a date or anything of the sort, at least not to my knowledge, but we went to FSK mall. I was marginally worried that I would run into my father, the megabitch, or the spawn of the megabitch while I was there, but fortunately that didn't come to pass.

I'm sure we'll go up there again - the idea was to get there early to avoid all the insanely excellent Dance Dance Revolution players that would just laugh us off the game. The concept ended up working fairly well, as I learned that most arcades are just like mine during a weekday -- no one comes in them. We managed to get several games in before being approached by the first "expert."

I'd say he excelled at a few things and failed at others. For one, I only saw him play a game on Double mode (for the uninitiated, this means that instead of being on one side of the machine, he did songs that required him to dance on both pads.) He failed at being heterosexual while doing so, however - I think he was trying to fool himself into believing he was at a rave or something.

A really gay rave.

Flame on.

Anyway, I couldn't help but laugh a bit at him but also feel a little irritated at the fact that he was clearly showing off for Nicky. It was either her or me, but when we left he made little googly eyes at her and made one of those fairy waves as he said "Goodbye" in a high, lilted voice.

She said he was creepy. That isn't quite the word I'd have used to describe him, if I had to pick one.

Anyway, it went alright I guess. There were no earth-shattering breakthroughs or anything; just us walking around and killing time. It was sort of ironic, I pointed out, that we drove to Frederick County to play DDR and Air Hockey -- those are basically what we do when we're in the arcade in Westminster when I'm not working.

It's kind of funny, I guess.

She's fun to talk to and mess around with, although she hits hard and seems to enjoy doing it. Clearly, I'll take her punch to the shoulder over the nine year old Vietnamese boy's propensity to punch me in "the junk," but it sort of leaves me wondering why so many people seem to enjoy hitting me in the first place. It's not like I'm a large, intimidating target or something.

Maybe people like to do it to get out their aggression from some childhood bully or somesuch nonsense.

Who knows.

Anyway, I really don't have all that much to say about things. It snowed quite a bit here today and I was actually slightly irritated that I couldn't go to work, but it ended up working out decently in the long run. For a change I may actually fall asleep tonight, since I still woke up in time to get ready for work anyway.

We'll see.

In the meantime, if I listen to Maroon and Stunt before I go to bed, I'll have listened to all the major Barenaked Ladies albums that I own in the span of one day. CD players are great for when you're cleaning or something, and today was certainly no exception. However, I think I'm going to go through Rock Spectacle again.

This reminds me to buy their DVD tomorrow with a bunch of their videos tomorrow. It'll be cheap after my discount, and now that I think about it, I think tomorrow is the special holiday day where employees get an extra percentage off of stuff, so maybe I'll buy something else tomorrow as well. There's only one day a year where this happens, you know?

~Don

#219 - Risk

Life is too short for me to be playing this retarded game any longer. And by game, I'm not referring to the several-hour-a-day-marathons of Arc the Lad III I've had over the past couple days either. I'm referring to a game that I've done nothing but fail at considerably since the beginning of my own personal time.

The game of love.

And I haven't really failed in the way that most people fail, not at all. I've failed repeatedly on the same note each time - the one where I just do what everyone else in the world does and just be honest and simply say the things that I've felt before I become so absorbed in them that I'm afraid to say anything about it.

It occured to me as I lied down to sleep last night and I thought about my dog that my father had put to sleep before we moved last year. I was overcome with sadness initially - that sort of gut reaction that occurs when you think you've gotten over something and then it turns around and surprises you by smacking you in the face with a tire iron kind of feeling, but it made me think after a few minutes.

Life is too short. It really is. In the blink of an eye, or so it feels now, I'm 23 years old and wondering why I feel so tired all the time. I'm just now starting to think about terms like future and career, and the like. I thought about how things would be different if my parents were spending less time screaming accusations at each other and more time pushing me towards college, and somewhat conversely wondered what would have happened if I had skipped waiting for their help and took the initiative to get myself into school on my own. One could easily say that the divorce was the reason I wasn't going to school, but I probably could have gotten that stuff taken care of on my own if really wanted to.

I chose to wait for someone to push me in that direction.

Anyway, I'm leading away from the real task at hand, which was my realization that life is just too short for me to play games with "the girl." I can think logically and add pluses and minuses and try to come up with some genius formula that determines whether or not she likes me, but that's not going to help anything.

What I really need to do is just go for it. Be honest. Tell her that I look forward to coming in every day, and tell her that as comfortable as I am with her as a friend, that I feel like I'd be happier if it were more.

It's become a foreign feeling to me in the past year or so, but I feel like I can do these things. I just have to push myself to actually do them, and stop asking everyone what they think I should do, or wonder what my friends might think, or wonder if it's just going to end bitterly like my mother and father did.

These things aren't important. What's important is that I feel positive "vibes" coming from her, and that I like when she comes around. I shouldn't sit here and tell myself that I'm falling in love or something; how would I know what that is?

It's not love if you sit in your room and think about possible outcomes and happiness but you never do anything to show it.

I don't know exactly what to do. I don't really care. Somehow I have to just do something to make that step.

Justine, who hasn't posted much in the past few days, reminded me to listen to BNL by always having it in her little listening section. So right now I've got in "Maybe You Should Drive."

Good times.

Cutting the ramble off here.

~Don