I’m sitting in a bar called the Viking Tavern in Ballard County, Washington. The place is owned by George’s brother Tim. He has opened up an absolutely fabulous bottle of wine from Marietta Cellars. I believe the wine we are drinking is the Red Lot # 29. It’s truly one of the best glasses of red wine I have ever had the pleasure of tasting. It’s a very homey type of tavern, and I am sitting in the corner of the bar. I’m taking a picture of it right now to post here when I get home. Picture taken. God, am I really that much of a geek? I’m sitting in Seattle and taking pictures and writing about it for my online journal.

Madness.

The meeting went very well today, I think, but there really wasn’t much of a need for me to be there. The guys in this particular meeting didn’t really want to hear much of the tech talk, so I pretty much sat there for the bulk of the meeting twiddling my thumbs. In fact, I kept checking my email and hitting the swirl. Fun stuff to do while in a business meeting, no? After the meeting we went back to the hotel to check out then hit downtown Seattle. Of course, the place we hit was Pike Place. God, how I love that district. So many people. The noise, the smells, the sights. Flowers for 5 bucks. If I lived here none of my female friends would ever be without flowers. I got some clams for Eve and picked up a pound of salmon for Karen and I. Of course, I got a Venti coffee from Starbucks, we picked up some souvenirs, and then we headed over here to hang out at the Tavern.

So now Brian and George are playing table top shuffle board, and I’m updating my journal. I’m hoping to hook up with Talulabella from the swirl tonight or tomorrow, and Uncle Mike said something about driving over to Yakima tomorrow to see a dirt bike race. Not so sure how keen I am on the dirt bike race, but the drive is supposed to be gorgeous. And I’ll be able to spend time with Uncle Mike, so it really doesn’t matter what we do.

Ok, it is official. I am obsessed with updating my live journal thoughout the course of this trip. We are currently at the Spring Hill Suites Hotel in Bothell, Washington. It is 1:15 AM Pacific Standard Time, which means it is 4:15 AM back home and I have been up for over 22 hours now. I’m waiting for my boss to finish up on his laptop so I can use it to get online and type these entries all over again and into my live journal. I wanted to get right on and type my last post, but instead I’m wrigint more while I wait for him to wrap up what he is doing. Yep, definitely obsessed.

George just made the comment that it’s 4 AM, and we are getting our second winds. He’s right. We’re up talking about business, and our personal lives, and various other topics that three men who have nothing in common come up with late at night in a hotel room.

We got to talking about our wives, for one. George has been married to his current wife for twenty years. He was married to his first wife for 10 years. I was only with Jody for a total over seven years, and most of it seems like an unreal blur to me at this point. Isn’t that odd? I’m not saying that it is a bad memory that I’ve wiped out. Quite the contrary. I have many wonderful memories of my time with her (AND many bad ones, as any marriage will). It’s just that the whole experience just seems like another life. Another person. An existence that doesn’t quite belong to me. I remember certain key events. I remember when we started dating, the night of my 21st birthday party. How I had almost blown the whole thing by joking calling her a “fucking bitch” that night. I remember the nervousness in her voice when she told me that that people in the theater company were already talking about us. I remember watching “Hellraiser” at her apartment and how much it freaked her out. I remember driving back to Winter Haven from St. Petersburg one day and playing with each other during the whole two hour trip. I remember how we used to make out for as long as we possibly could in the parking lot of the Polk Community College theater, and how I was usually late for work as a result. I remember reading poetry to her on our first Valentines Day together. I remember asking her to marry me a few days after that at Epcot. I remember the night Alex was conceived. I remember a lot of nights when he could have been. I remember lying next to her while she was pregnant, and feeling Alex kick my back through her belly.

I remember all of these things and more. The list could go on and on. But they don’t feel like my memories any more. They feel like they belong to someone else, and I’m just borrowing them.

I need to go to sleep. I’m being wayyyy to thoughtful for my own good.

According to my battery indicator, I have about sixteen minutes of time left before this laptop dies. I’m going to try and get all of my thoughts down in that period. Of course, I’m in the mood to write and I could probably do so for much longer than the measly amount of time I have been afforded.

It’s currently 12:26 AM Eastern Standard Time. I have no idea what time zone I am in at this point. I think we’re less than an hour from Seattle, so I would assume we are in the Pacific Time zone now. I’m not updating this live. Not only is the wireless modem in my boss’s computer, it doesn’t seem to work from the sky. Guess the technology isn’t quite there yet.

The in-flight movie just ended. Spider-Man. God, how I love that movie. It seems silly how much joy it brings to me, as I sit here and write about it. It’s the honest to God truth, though. I get misty eyed at several points during the film. It was everything I expected it to be and more. Not just because it was a good movie. Not just because it was about a super hero. Because it fulfilled all of my childhood dreams. Because, from the time I was twelve, I could see in my mind what it would look like to see Spider-Man swinging through the streets of New York City, and that I saw in that movie was straight from my mind’s eye. Because Spider-Man is supposed to save babies from burning buildings. Because J. Jonah Jameson is supposed to be an intolerable bastard that shows a heart when the chips are down. Because Ben Parker is supposed to be the kind of man you could fall in love with the minute you hear him utter his first line. Because of all these factors and more. Yes, as I’ve said before, there were things in the movie that I could pick apart if I choose to do so. I do not. The movie was a dream come true, and there will always be a small part of me that thanks Sam Raimi for not pissing on my dreams (as if I didn’t love him enough for the Evil Dead movies).

Oh boy! My boss just noticed the battery power indicators on my laptop and gave me fresh batteries. According to the power level indicators I have almost 4 hours of time left to play. This could turn into a very large entry indeed!

I love to fly. I always have. When I was a child, it meant going to see my father. After my dad left, I would spend a month of so every summer in Mississippi with him. Every year, I got to fly there all by myself. Mom and Dad split when I was very young, so it was a pretty big deal. I think I flew Delta a lot back them. I remember that my first cup of coffee was had on a plane while flying back from seeing my father. It was a very late flight, maybe even a red eye, and I so desperately did not want to fall asleep. I asked the stewardess for a cup of coffee, and even though I think it was pretty obvious that I had never had a cup of coffee in my life (I think I was all of 11 at the time) she brought me one with plenty of cream and sugar. All of which, of course, went into the cup. Plus a bit extra that I had her bring to me. What a horribly disgusting experience. I really don’t recall many other times in my life that I drank something that tasted quite so bad. I drank the whole cup, though.

I am enjoying a cup right now, as a matter of fact. I appreciate coffee much more these days, of course. I have been drinking a lot more of it in the past few months when compared to the amount that I was drinking when I first started losing weight in January of last year. I suppose that, as I’m getting closer to my goal weight, I want to scale back just a little and not be so strict with myself. I’m very comfortable with creeping up on my target weight. It has taken me 29 years to get where I am now, so I think I can deal with a few more months. And I love coffee. Love it. I’m going to drink so much coffee while I’m here in Seattle that I’ll have to walk around with a catheter in so I can actually see something other than the inside of a bathroom. I’m going to swim in coffee. Mmm. A Starbuck’s on every corner. Paradise. Absolute paradise.

Coffee. I remember why I started drinking coffee (that’s right kids, it’s one of those type of entries. Stream of thought consciousness. Deal with it) on a regular basis. Really, the only cup of coffee I had ever drank in my life up until I was in the 12th grade is the one I mentioned above. When I was a senior in high school, however, I started drinking coffee on a regular basis for one of the silliest reasons in the whole world. That’s right, kids, I started drinking coffee because of a girl. Sherry Ellen Kupersmith. She worked at the Barnies in Tyrone Square Mall and absolutely loved coffee. I think it was part of the whole Pinellas County Center for the Arts Bohemian scene of the time. Everyone was drinking coffee and reading classic literature. We were all SO cool. I read Les Miserables that year. I suffered through all of the thousands of pages of that abysmally long book just so I could say I read it. But I digress (gee, there is a shocker). I started drinking coffee because it was an excuse to go to the coffee shop. We were also in an Advanced Placement Literature class together that year. The teacher, Mr. Lamore, was cool enough to buy us a coffee maker after we pooled the money together for it. Sherry would supply the coffee from Barnies, and it was my job to actually make the coffee before class. For some reason, I made coffee better than the girl who worked in the coffee shop. Go figure. I’ll always associate coffee with my crush on Sherry, and I am reminded of her almost every time I have a cup. Ironically, coffee isn’t the only “bad” habit that I started because of her. After she refused to return my affections (not that I ever actually said anything to her to give her a chance to do so…except for asking her once if she wanted to have cheap, meaningless sex…god, I was a slick son of a bitch back then, wasn’t I?) I decided to take up smoking. Why? Because Sherry loathed smoking. So that was how I was going to show her. I was going to smoke and give myself cancer and die a horrible death. Just to show her what happens when she spurns me. Ha!

I thought it was a good point, don’t you?

I still carry a torch for Sherry. Isn’t that funny? Eve pointed that little fact out to me the other day. She said she couldn’t understand why. I really can’t explain it myself. I guess it was because she was the first person I ever envisioned myself having children with. That was the extent of my fantasy life with her!! I actually had visions of us in the delivery room. Of her drenched in sweat and crushing my hands and cursing my name. I had visions of our children and what we would do for a living (both professional actors of course). I saw it all. None of it came to pass, of course. I never even kissed her. It was still a very potent vision at the time, and part of me will always hold on to the beauty of that dream.

Ah, speaking of smoking, the quitting campaign is going very well. I haven’t gone anywhere near a smoke since Saturday, and I’m feeling really good about it. I’m still coughing a lot – more so than when I was smoking, actually! I have to get all that crap out of my lungs somehow, so I don’t really mind the process.

I’m looking over the wing of the plane into almost absolute darkness. I can see one star out the window, and that is it. It looks like a little faerie out there floating in the darkness. I really wish that I had one of my friends with me right now. Someone I could hold hands with and talk about all of these random thoughts that are streaming through my head. My boss and I have been talking quite a bit, but of course he wants to talk about work stuff. That is our frame of reference. I’m not going to tell him stories of my childhood or my insecurities, and I don’t think I want to hear his either. He has talked to me a lot about the business, though. Given me the inside scoop on some of his business dealings. He’s even made the offer to help me in my efforts outside of the company. I haven’t hid the fact that I have been doing design on the side, and he has expressed a willingness to be part of those endeavors. I’m not sure how to take that offer at this point. It seems to be a good offer, but I really wanted to strike out on my own a bit with this. It’s hard to pass up the ability to offer a complete solution (hosting on up) to my clients, however. I have to see how my partners would feel about it. Considering that one of those partners left my boss several years ago and have a fairly bitter taste in his mouth over it at times, however, makes me not so certain that this particular suggestion would fly with him.

Twenty minutes now until we land in Seattle. That means it is now 10:28 Pacific Standard Time. We are making our final approach, so I suppose I should shut this down and get myself ready to land. I’ll upload this when I can.

Hey gang! I’m sitting on the tarmac at Chicago O’Hare International Airport, waiting to take off to head to Seattle. We were late arriving in Chicago, so we missed our initial flight. Fortunately there was another flight leaving an hour later that was far from full. My boss has a wireless internet hookup on his laptop, so I’m using it to update my journal from there.

I sure do love technology.

I’m kind of worried that the car rental company will be closed when we finally arrive in Seattle, but I suppose we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Chicago is nice. Good food. At least in the airport. Ok, so the food was crappy and I didn’t see much of anything, but now I’ve been in Chicago.

Well, time to sign off before the plane leaves!

Well, I’ve got a few minutes left on my lunch break, and then two hours until I leave for the airport to head to Seattle for the weekend. Next weekend, I’ll be in Atlanta for Dragon Con. All of this travel in such a short time! I feel like a jet setter. Of course, jet setters are usually wealthy individuals and I’m doing these by the absolute seat of my pants, but other than that I’m the man! Of course, the journey on the plane is going to be an interesting one. My boss wants to continue working on the auction demo that we are giving tomorrow, so it might be an 8 hour working flight. We shall definitely see.

One of those question thingys…Snatched from Khep and Faeriegrrl

I AM: certifiably insane.
I KNOW: that I have the capactity to be happy.
I WANT: to not struggle anymore
I HAVE: the greatest friends a person could ever hope for
I WISH: it could be real for just one day.
I HATE: feeling week.
I MISS: My Father, Ann and Beau
I FEAR: Something happening to my son
I HEAR: that someday that gum I like is going to come back in style.
I SEARCH: for meaning where there is none.
I WONDER: how I got so fucked up
I REGRET: not taking advantage of what I had in front of me
I LOVE: far too easily.
I ACHE: when I dwell on it too much
I CARE: more than I should
I ALWAYS: try and make them laugh
I AM NOT: as nice as everyone thinks I am
I DANCE: a lot less than I used to
I SING: more than I talk
I CRY: more than I’m comfortable with
I DO NOT ALWAYS: appreciate what I have
I FIGHT: with myself
I WRITE: when I’m inspired
I LOST: a big chunk of my life
I CONFUSE: situations by overanalyzing them
I LISTEN: more than people think
I CAN USUALLY BE FOUND: when I’m needed
I NEED: to figure out what i need
I AM HAPPY ABOUT: the fact that they still haven’t committed me
I SHOULD: quit being so whiny

Last night, Karen, Alex and I went shopping at Wal-Mart so that Karen and I could get some new clothes. I love shopping for clothes at Wal-Mart. LOVE it. Why, you may ask? BECAUSE I CAN. Because before I lost the extra poundage, the only place I could shop was Casual Male. For what I would have gotten one pair of pants and a shirt for at Casual Male, I got two pair of shorts, a pair of jeans, two button up shirts, two pair of workout shorts, a swimsuit, a belt and a pair of shoes. What’s even better, is that I am down yet another size in my pants and my shirts. Size 40 pants were purchased last night, and I’m wearing XL shirts now. Truly getting into “normal” sizes. For those of you who don’t know, when I started this I was wearing size 60 pants and 4X shirts. And the pants were getting tight.

I haven’t heard anything about Titus Andronicus yet, but I’ve decided that really doesn’t mean a damn thing. The director did contact me yesterday, and asked about the conflicts that I listed on my audition form. I’ve been wondering if that meant I would be cast in one of the minor, multi-character roles. I realized that wouldnt’ be such a bad thing, though. Honestly, I know who I would have cast in the 4 major parts male parts that are not pre cast from the auditons on Monday night, and I wasn’t one of them. “ranney” is already in the show as Aaron, and if David casts the way I would have the other night, he could have one hell of a show on his hands, and it would be a genuine honor to work with those individuals (Brian Shea in particular. I’ve become a really big fan of his work, and would love to see him in the rehearsal process). So, in any case, if David offers me a part I’ll be accepting it gladly. I just hope I have more lines than “Yes, M’lord.” 🙂

This next bit will only make sense to those of you who know what the Bad Girl Swirl is. Please feel free to skip this part if you don’t.

I’m starting to drift from the Swirl again. Yet another Don Juan thread has started, and of course this has brought all of the Don Juan defenders out of the woodwork. I’m sick of them. I’m sick of seeing them be accepted so readily, to be honest. I may sound a bit whiny about it, but it’s not fair. The entire time I’ve been on the swirl, I have respected the fact that it is a bulletin board for women, and that I am a guest on their turf. I have tried to conduct myself accordingly. I have not tried to use it as a dating pool, or as a place to find out how to more easily score with chicks. I guess there’s just a new breed of swirler out there, and I’m from the bad old days when boys weren’t trusted. Whatever. I’m also sick to DEATH of some new Don Juan posting how he’s “defecting” from there every other week, and his thread causing all the Don Juan apologists out of the woodwork to spout yet again about how wonderful their methods are.

It’s a bunch of crap, it’s detracted from what the Swirl was, and it’s made me want to go away. I’ve been pulling back slowly. I might be gone altogether soon. I use Bulletin Boards as a fun place to go, not something I want to go to every day and get sick over. I’ve made a ton of friends from the swirl, and I’m thinking it’s time to cut my losses and walk away.

Ok…that’s done…thanks for the indulgence.

i am extremely intelligent and very wise. i think logically and rhetorically in order to get problems solved. if i’m not mad now, i’m getting very close.

how mad are you?

this quiz was made by piksy

I quit smoking on Saturday. Cold Turkey. I had my last cigarette shortly after midnight on Friday night, and I haven’t had one since. Saturday and Sunday were fine.

Today was hell.

I’ve never felt that bad from an addiction before. One of my friends online, Dr. Deb Hunka, offered that it was likely the result of my having lost so much weight. The last two times I’ve quit for real, I was significantly bigger. Now that I’m not, the nicotine to body weight ratio is much higher. It sounds good anyway.

Whatever the reason, I was a WRECK today. I was shaking and pale, I felt sick to my stomach. I was dizzy. I felt like I was going to pass out at times. I felt claustrophobic. Basically, I felt like utter and complete shit.

I made it through the day, though. I made it through having some serious problems getting the washing well wenches site up. I made it through some potentially ugly news at work (paychecks looks iffy for Wednesday). I made it through my audition for Titus Andronicus, where I was surrounded by people who smoked and would have gladly given me one. I made it, damnit.

So I feel pretty good about my chances for continued success.

Not sure how to feel about my Titus Andronicus audition. I read once, about 4 lines, and not for any of the leads in the show. Which leads my over-analyzing mind to one of two conclusions. Either David has confidence in my abilities and doesn’t need to see any more, or I wasn’t what he was looking for in any of the major roles.

At this point, I’m hoping for the former, but feeling it’s the latter. That’s what I do though. Welcome to my mind.

One of these days I’m going to learn to keep my mouth shut. I have this habit of saying the wrong thing in front of the wrong person, and having it jump back up and bite me in the ass later. Mind you, it’s not always a horrible backlash, but it can be really humiliating.

Ugh…I can hardly see straight right now.

I’ve been working on the Washing Well Wenches site for the last two hours, trying to get a mad dash done so I can have some pictures on their site by (hopefully) the end of the weekend. Dani called me the other day, and in her very non-aggressive way explained to me that Michigan (where they currently are) is where they get the most requests for pictures and products. So now I have a fire under my ass to get this thing up as soon as possible. Oh yeah, she’s also sending me some money. That doesn’t hurt the cause, either.

Last night, Alex and I got into a discussion about tornadoes. He was very worried that the storm that was coming was going to include a tornado. After much grilling, I finally got to the heart of his concerns.

He is afraid of dying.

He started crying on me, because he doesn’t want to die.

Why does a six year old have to start having these thoughts? Is this the “gift” he’s blessed with because of his high intellect? Is he going to start questioning God by the time he’s 10? We’re talking about the same child who told me once that he knew God was real, because “I was standing on the mountain and I looked out and saw how everything was beautiful and I knew I was looking at God.” This was almost a YEAR AGO.

I guess it just reminds me that he’s getting older. That’s he’s going to start worrying about this kind of thing. That, already, that veil of innocence is getting lifted from his eyes and he is realizing there are scary things in the world.

I see this, and I hate it. I’m afraid he’s going to become a bitter and cynical son of a bitch like his old man.

Edited on August 28th, 2002

Alex’s soon-to-be Step Father read this and informed me that the place where Alex “saw God” was Chimney Rock in North Carolina. This is a picture of what it is that Alex saw.